Who discovered the polio virus?
Poliovirus was discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1909. Before the discovery of the infectious nature of the disease, the paralytic aspect was considered to be its characteristic feature, as documented by the denomination “infantile paralysis.” Although its infectious nature was long hypothesized, Ivar Wickman was the first to clearly show the infectious nature of polio after an epidemic in Sweden in 1905. Landsteiner and his assistant E. Popper injected intraperitoneally suspensions from the spinal cord of a 9-year-old boy into rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and monkeys. Only the monkeys showed signs of disease. Both displayed severe degeneration of motor neurons and inflammatory cell infiltration in the spinal cord. no bacteria were found, and the nervous system changes resembled those of rabies, so a viral etiology of the disease was suggested. Lansteiner sent fragments of a spinal cord from a 13 year old child afflicted with poliomyelitis to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In collaborat
