POLIOMYELITIS—A RÉSUMÉ

DEFINITION  Poliomyelitis is a generalized systemic infection due to a virus, which has a predilection for the central nervous system and which sometimes produces flaccid paralysis.¹ It is also known as epidemic or acute infantile paralysis, acute wasting paralysis and Heine-Medin's disease, terms which should be discarded, since the nonparalytic form of the disease is the more common² and Underwood³ described it before Heine was born.⁴ Polioencephalitis is a syndrome resembling both poliomyelitis and encephalitis, and the term may signify either. Landry's paralysis usually, though not always, is a rapidly ascending form of poliomyelitis;⁵ sometimes it is familial;⁶ sometimes it is due to rabies, and occasionally it follows injections of vaccine.⁷ Acute aseptic or serous meningitis⁸ is very likely a nonparalytic form of poliomyelitis.

HISTORY  Evidence of poliomyelitis in Egyptian mummies of 3,700 B. C.⁹ and in skeletons of vikings buried in