Poliomyelitis
Charles’ Armstrong’s involvement in poliomyelitis research originated in the
national forces generated as the result of the election of the disease’s most famous victim
to the Presidency of the United States. Many prominent investigators and health workers,
supported by an enthusiastic and philanthropic base, over the course of a relatively few
years, were able to make major advances concerning the nature of the virus causing the
disease, growing it in large quantities to make immunizing vaccines and to mount
effective efforts to protect and eliminate the disease from large populations in many areas
of the world unless stymied by social taboos, cultural barriers, inaccessibility, political
conflicts, religious preferences or just plain ignorance. In commemoration of its 20th
Anniversary Founding, the Trustees of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
invited Armstrong and fourteen other distinguished, accomplished scientists to Warm
Springs, Georgia on January 2, 1958 to be inducted into “The Polio Hall of Fame” (1).
Poliomyelitis (polios – Greek – “gray”; myelos – marrow, myelitis – Greek –
“inflammation of the spinal cord”; nomenclature based on the prominent anatomical
location of pathological involvement) is a viral disease caused by members of the picorna
group (“pico” = small; “rna” referring to the nucleic acid core or genome). Its natural
habitat is the human alimentary tract and it belongs to the family of Enteroviruses that
also include the Coxsackie A and B viruses, the Echoviruses and the Rhinoviruses. The
polioviruses exist in 3 distinct immunological types. Despite their widespread distribution
in nature, the paralytic and crippling hallmarks of the disease were first recognized only
in the relatively recent past of human history.