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The recent death of FC Robbins 1 , Nobel laureate and pioneer worker who cultivated the poliomyelitis virus, prompts this note. Poliomyelitis pre-dates recorded history. 2 Biblical descriptions of the lame and crippled lack sufficient detail for diagnosis. However, a funereal stele of the priest Ruma from the 19th Egyptian dynasty shows shortening and marked wasting of his right leg; he walks on his toes and uses a stick 3 ; this has been attributed to poliomyelitis. 4 Frequent 18th century epidemics allowed a British doctor, Michael Underwood, to describe poliomyelitis as an entity in 1789, referring to a "debility of the lower extremities in children" 5 John Badham described an acute paralysis suggestive of poliomyelitis in four children in 1835. 6
Little more was written until Jacob von Heine published a 78 page monograph in 1840, which recognised poliomyelitis as a disease entity (Heine also portrayed congenital spastic diplegia, later elaborated by Little in 1841). He separated the disease from other forms of paralysis and termed it infantile spinal paralysis. 7 He described the residual deformities, and suspected a cord lesion. Heine was a German orthopaedist, born 16 April 1800 at Lauterbach. His family had a long tradition of bonesetting. Two years after graduation at Wurzburg in 1827 and postgraduate work, he left Wurzburg; the government elected him to organise an orthopaedic clinic in Cannstatt, which attracted patients from all over Europe. He died on 12 November 1879.