POLIOMYELITIS

[po.lio.my.eli.tis] n [NL, fr. Gk polios gray + myelos marrow--more at fallow, myel-] (1878): an acute infectious virus disease characterized by fever, motor paralysis, and atrophy of skeletal muscles often with permanent disability and deformity and marked by inflammation of nerve cells in the anterior gray matter in each lateral half of the spinal cord--called also infantile paralysis