Special article: Polio: Its history and its eradication

Abstract

Poliomyelitis has a long history, dating back at least to the Egyptian eighteenth dynasty (1580-1350 BC). In 1835, the first account of an outbreak of the disease was described by John Badham, and in 1840, Jacob von Heine, a German orthopedist, provided the first description indicating the spinal cord as the primary site of the paralytic form of the disease. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous epidemics began to occur with increasing frequency and severity. Many of these epidemics were accompanied by hysterical reactions. Because the paralyzed patients experienced respiratory compromise, artificial breathing support was needed. One of the devices most effectively used to manage the breathing for paralytic polio patients was the iron lung. In 1949, John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins showed that poliovirus caused visible damage to primate cells derived from tissues other than those of the nervous system. This technology ultimately provided the means for producing large quantities of standardized poliovirus for the production of the killed vaccine (Salk vaccine, inactivated polio vaccine) and, eventually, the live poliovirus vaccines (Sabin vaccine, oral polio vaccine). The last case of wild strain poliomyelitis in the United States occurred in 1979. In 1998, the national vaccine advisory bodies responsible for recommending immunization began advocating the use of the enhanced inactivated polio vaccine as an alternative to the oral vaccine. Copyright © 2000 by W.B. Saunders Company