Explore the recorded discovery and history of Poliovirus, with source links and stated limits.
CDC states that most people infected with poliovirus have no visible symptoms, while about 1 in 4 have flu-like symptoms and a smaller proportion develop illness affecting the brain and spinal cord. WHO describes polio as mainly affecting children under 5, with one in 200 infections leading to irreversible paralysis. This profile covers the three poliovirus serotypes as a group.
CDC's Pink Book records that Michael Underwood first described a debility of the lower extremities in children recognisable as poliomyelitis, in England in 1789. Descriptions of polio-like illness go back to antiquity, including a funerary stele showing a man with a withered leg.
Polio infections peaked in the United States in 1952 with more than 21,000 paralytic cases, during the increasingly severe summer and autumn epidemics of the first half of the 20th century.
Inactivated polio vaccine was introduced in 1955 and oral poliovirus vaccine in 1961, after which polio incidence declined rapidly.
The last case of wild poliovirus acquired in the United States was in 1979.
In 1988 the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the worldwide eradication of polio, launching the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. WHO records a 99% reduction in incidence since then.
Polio-like illness was depicted and described long before poliovirus was known, and the 1789 record is a clinical description rather than a first case. No patient zero or place of origin follows from these records.
Source check: 2026-09-19. Educational content; independent scientific review remains pending.