Armstrong – Table of Contents

epidemic the disease affected rural areas more than urban areas and involved children
more than adults. It caused no deaths but it seemed to lead to occasional serious sequelae
(which in light of subsequent knowledge about the disease’s etiology seem to be unlikely
consequences). Payne and Armstrong echoed the contemporary belief that this disease
was infectious but the etiology was unknown. This epidemic resembled others reported
and described by various European authors and identified by numerous designations,
usually for the areas in which the epidemics occurred. In more recent years this entity has
been a well-recognized illness and has been labeled “epidemic pleurodynia.” It is
diagnosed readily when occurring in epidemics; diagnosis can be confused with various
acute chest and abdominal painful illnesses when occurring in isolated, non-epidemic
cases.
Discovery of the viral etiology of this illness occurred with the advent and
common use of the suckling mouse as a laboratory host for the cultivation of Coxsackie
viruses. Dr. Gilbert Dalldorf (12) first isolated Coxsackie viruses around 1947-1948 from
the feces of patients with paralytic disease, presumably poliomyelitis, in the town of
Coxsackie in upstate New York. Dalldorf isolated many strains in suckling mice and
classified the strains into Groups A and B according to the pathologic changes caused in
the tissues of the mice by the viruses. In 1949 and 1950, investigators at Yale Medical
School (12) noted laboratory infections in some of the personnel working with the
viruses; some of these illnesses suggested epidemic pleurodynia, and the investigators
showed later that a Coxsackie Group B type 1 strain probably caused the illnesses. In
1947, Finn and associates (12) reported a large outbreak of epidemic pleurodynia in
Boston, Massachusetts. Despite a diligent laboratory search, the investigators found no