Clinical Disease Entity
Jacob von Heine in 1840 was the first to recognize poliomyelitis as a clinical disease entity. He separated the disease from other forms of paralysis and termed it infantile spinal paralysis. The disease was sometimes called Heine-Medin's disease before it became generally known as poliomyelitis. He wrote a monograph on congenital and acquired dislocation, and was also the first to describe spastic paraplegia, also in 1840.
References
Pietrzak, Krzysztof et al. “Jacob Heine (1800-1879).” Journal of neurology vol. 264,7 (2017): 1545-1546. doi:10.1007/s00415-017-8454-7