Armstrong – Table of Contents

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further suggested that relative humidity of from 27 to 28 per cent for atmospheric air
warmed to 90F represented a critical level below which poliomyelitis spread with
difficulty.
Armstrong realized that the numbers of recognized cases of poliomyelitis in one
study (including the District of Columbia, Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Virginia and
Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties, Maryland) were small and that the
significance of any single rise in numbers of reported cases that appeared to be related in
time to a change of relative humidity at 90F was of questionable statistical significance.
However, the fact that such an occurrence was repeated five times (on the graphic data)
lent support to a probable significant relationship between the two phenomena. The
evidence, as recorded, suggested that it might be possible to predict with some degree of
probability the course of an established outbreak in a limited area for about three weeks
in advance. Especially this would be possible when a fall in the relative humidity of
atmospheric air warmed to 90F occurred.
Armstrong, thus, hypothesized that the general correlation between the relative
humidity of air at the temperature of the nose and throat, 90F, pointed, together with
much additional evidence, toward the upper respiratory tract of man as a body area
significant in the seasonal spread of poliomyelitis and as possibly accounting for its
seasonal incidence. The evidence for the hypothesis, though correlative, was not
definitive. Nevertheless, the attempt to find a reasonable explanation for the seasonal
incidence of poliomyelitis demonstrated the imagination, creativity, ingenuity, intuition
and the still residual talent of Charles Armstrong’s mind. This project was his last major
intellectual effort. The question of the seasonal incidence of poliomyelitis was soon to

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