Polio

Poliomyelitis, infectious virus disease of the central nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis. The greatest incidence of the disease, also known as infantile paralysis, is in children between the ages of five and ten years. The disease was described in 1840 by the German orthopedist Jacob von Heine. In its clinical form it is more prevalent in temperate zones. Symptoms The virus usually enters the body through the alimentary tract and spreads along nerve cells to …

…polio vaccine (TOPV), was licensed in 1963 and has replaced the Salk injectable vaccine as the standard immunizing agent in the U.S. As a result of routine immunization, outbreaks of paralytic poliomyelitis declined dramatically from 57,879 cases in 1952 to only a few each year. The vulnerability of a population that was not immunized was demonstrated in 1979, when 16 cases of paralytic poliomyelitis occurred among Amish people in the United States and Canada who had not been vaccinated.