Abstract
Three patients with probable poliomyelitis beginning with transverse myelopathy (involvement of grey and white matter of the spinal cord) are described. The diagnosis was made on both the clinical picture and stools examination in the third case in whom type 3 polio virus was recovered from the stools. The rarity of sensory loss and involvement of long tracts (white matter) of the spinal cord is stressed. Clinicians in polio endemic areas are alerted to the protean features of this common disease.