Poliomyelitis First Defined
French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his assistant A. Joffroy were the first scientists to demonstrate that the cause of paralysis with muscle atrophy was damage and destruction of the grey matter of the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord. Their results were published in 1870.
This discovery gave rise to the pathological term for the disease: "poliomyelitis" - from the Ancient Greek poliós, meaning "grey", myelós, meaning "marrow", referring to the grey matter of the spinal cord, and the suffix -itis, which denotes inflammation.
References:
Kumar, D. R., Aslinia, F., Yale, S. H., & Mazza, J. J. (2011). Jean-Martin Charcot: The Father of Neurology. Clinical medicine & research, 9(1), 46–49. https://doi.org/10.3121/cmr.2009.883
