POLIOMYELITIS

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Abstract
There are few diseases which illustrate as well as poliomyelitis the importance of a quantitative point of view in evaluation of the variegated clinical patterns. In this infection the subclinical case grades into the clinical case and the nonparalytic into the paralytic with no sharp qualitative separations and with correspondingly wide variations of intensity of pathologic change in nervous tissues. Death itself may come as the result of an unusually intense involvement of localized vital brainstem centers, which are to some extent involved even in mild cases, or may follow widespread damage to many important centers without overwhelming any one of them. In such cases it is obviously impossible to say which straw it was which broke the camel's back. In the course of study of the pathologic material from 24 human cases, 13 of them previously described in detail,1 it became increasingly clear that the use of pathologic