Dissertation Information for Margaret L. GrimshawNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: The poliovirus controversy in the years before World War II: Shaping America's medical science approach to human disease Abstract: Before World War II American investigators were divided into two schools of thought as to the etiology and pathogenesis of poliomyelitis. One faction, working within the dominant microbiological approach to infection, supported the theory that poliomyelitis was caused by a neurotropic virus that entered the body through the nose, traveled up the olfactory filaments exclusively to the brain, then through the spinal cord to peripheral nervous tissue, ultimately leading to severe destruction of motor nerve cells. The challenging faction, guided by an epidemiological perspective of disease, believed that polio was caused by at least two immunologically distinct enteric viruses that invaded the human host through the alimentary tract, became manifest in a mild or "inapparent" form sufficient enough to produce lifelong immunity against further attack and only rarely caused paralysis or death. The apparent dispute focused on whether poliomyelitis was primarily a disorder of the central nervous system or generally a systemic illness. The core of the argument, however, questioned the fundamental way in which medical science determined the nature not only of poliomyelitis, but of all infectious diseases. |
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