PATHOLOGY AND PATHOGENESIS OF HUMAN POLIOMYELITIS

Abstract

Our knowledge of the pathology and pathogenesis of human poliomyelitis has developed slowly over a period of many years, and most of the present day concepts are still so young that they have not yet influenced to any appreciable extent studies on the pathologic physiology of the disease. The present discussion will deal with three major questions: 1. What are the essential lesions of the disease and where are they located? 2. How extensive must those lesions be to produce the paralytic disease and what is the basis for the transitory character of some of the paralysis? 3. What determines the special localization and distribution of the lesions? The earliest students of the disease¹ were able to prove that the major pathologic change was in the central nervous system, and no scientific investigator has as yet found any evidence to the contrary. Although it had been suspected by some