ABSTRACT
Encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) was isolated for the rst time in 1945 in Miami, Florida, from a captive chimpanzee and a gibbon that died suddenly of pulmonary oedema and myocarditis [1]. Mice inoculated with a ltered oedema uid from the gibbon or the chimpanzee displayed paralysis of the posterior members and myocarditis followed by death in a week. The pathogenic agent was at that time given the name of encephalomyocarditis virus. The virus had probably been transmitted from wild rats living in proximity to the monkeys, as nearly 50% of the captured rats had antibodies against EMCV. In 1948, in the Mengo district of Ouganda, Dick et al. had isolated the Mengo virus [2] from a captive rhesus monkey that had developed a posterior member paralysis. In 1949, cross-neutralization studies showed that the Mengo virus, the EMCV, the Columbia-SK (discovered in 1939), and the MM (discovered in 1943) were antigenically indistinguishable but differed from the Theiler virus (TMEV) [3].
