Poliomyelitis
/ˌpoʊlioʊˌmaɪəˈlaɪtɪs/noun
A viral disease that destroys motor nerve cells in the spinal cord and can leave permanent paralysis.
The Greek roots
Literally: “inflammation of the grey marrow”
The story of the word
The virus attacks the grey matter in the front horns of the spinal cord, and the name records the pathology exactly. German clinicians assembled it in the nineteenth century once the post-mortem picture was clear; before that the disease went by infantile paralysis, which described the patients rather than the lesion. Grey matter is grey because it is packed with cell bodies instead of the pale fat that gives myelin, from the same μυελός, its colour.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
In a sentence
Poliomyelitis is down to a handful of cases a year worldwide.
Her grandmother had polio in 1952 and walked with a caliper for sixty years.