poliomyelitis: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

The inactivated vaccine was devised by American physician Jonas Salk (1914–1995) in the 1950s. The vaccine contains all three serotypes of the poliovirus. The viruses, which are inactivated and incapable of causing an infection, are grown in a type of monkey kidney cell. When injected, the viruses stimulate an immune response that is protective. Initially, vaccine impurity was the cause of illness and death in some people who received the Salk vaccine. Refinement of the vaccine preparation eliminated these unwanted effects. Still, in the 1990s, a controversy arose regarding the vaccine as a suggested source of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), based on the known presence of the AIDS virus in monkey tissue cells. However, scrupulously conducted examinations ruled out this suggestion.

The oral vaccine was developed by Polish-born American physician Albert Sabin (1906–1993) in the late 1950s and was licensed for use in 1963. This vaccine has largely replaced the injected Salk vaccine. The vaccine also contains live, but weakened (attenuated) poliovirus.

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The effects of a polio infection have been known since prehistory: Egyptian paintings and carvings depict otherwise healthy people with withered limbs

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In 1789 the first clinical description of poliomyelitis was provided by the British physician Michael Underwood—he refers to polio as “a debility of the lower extremities".^[4] The first medical report on poliomyelitis was by Jakob Heine in 1840. Karl Oskar Medin was the first to empirically study a poliomyelitis epidemic in 1890.^[3] The work of these two physicians led to the disease being known as Heine-Medin disease.

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