December 18, 1908

Poliovirus

Landsteiner and Popper demonstrate poliomyelitis transmission to monkeys

Three surnames are routinely attached to this milestone. The original team had two, and it announced the result in December 1908.

Wrong year, wrong roster

The listing dates the first isolation of poliovirus to 1909 and credits Karl Landsteiner, Constantin Levaditi and Erwin Popper. The presentation it describes was made on 18 December 1908, and Levaditi was not part of it.

On that date Landsteiner reported to Vienna's Imperial and Royal Society of Physicians that he and Popper had experimentally transmitted human poliomyelitis to monkeys.

The detailed Landsteiner–Popper paper appeared in a 1909 journal volume, which is why chronologies alternate between the two years.

Two animals and a nine-year-old boy

They inoculated a rhesus monkey and a baboon with a spinal-cord suspension obtained from a nine-year-old boy who had died after four days of severe poliomyelitis.

Both animals developed characteristic nervous-system lesions, and the rhesus monkey developed complete flaccid paralysis of both legs. With no bacterium identified, the work supported classifying the agent as a filterable virus.

The pair could not transmit the agent serially from monkey to monkey; serial passage was achieved in 1909 by several teams independently, including Landsteiner working with Levaditi.

"Isolate" is the wrong verb

Calling this an isolation is anachronistic if isolation means purification or cultivation. The experiment demonstrated a transmissible, filterable agent; successful growth in human tissue culture came in 1949.

The original work also revealed nothing about poliovirus serotypes. The three immunological types were identified in 1949, four decades later.

Michael Underwood supplied the first recognised clinical description in 1789, and formal recognition of the condition is generally credited to Jakob Heine in 1840.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date disputed

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 1908-12-18.

What the sources leave uncertain

The discovery was presented on December 18, 1908; the full Landsteiner–Popper paper was published in a 1909 journal volume. Sources consequently alternate between 1908 and 1909.
The listed title merges two stages of research: the original Landsteiner–Popper transmission experiment and Landsteiner–Levaditi’s later serial-passage work.
Calling this an “isolation” is anachronistic if understood as purification or cultivation. The experiment demonstrated a transmissible, filterable agent; successful growth in human tissue culture came in 1949.