Jonas Salk's Polio Epidemic

Dr. Leonard Hayflick lived in Philadelphia during the 1946 Polio epidemic. He was a teenage boy who would soon grow up loving microbiology and wanting to make a career out of it. He enrolled at Penn University, where he was taking classes like math, chemistry, and zoology. One course in particular that stood out to Dr. Hayflick was bacteriology. Bacteriology is now known as microbiology, the study of viruses, bacteria, and other microscopic organisms.

On October 4, 1951, at 12:51 a.m. Henrietta Lacks died. Shortly after Henrietta’s death, the construction of what would be called the HeLa factory began. It’s sole purpose, to end polio. In February of 1952, Jonas Salk announced that he had developed the world’s first polio vaccine, but couldn’t administer it until further testing.

In these chapters Reiss limits the non-medical information to a minimum only giving what is necessary to understand the disease filled city of New York. Which helps readers get to the information they need while maintaining clarity of the background situation. With such a crowded city disease was inevitable. However, continental leadership tried to minimize the spread of disease. The most devastating disease to the continental army in New York City was syphilis, but Washington attempted to control this issue by fining the soldiers who contracted the disease.

One of the biggest contribution was the polio vaccine.

This allowed for more experiments to be done which lead to the development of the polio vaccine. As stated by Neil Bhavsar, “the vaccine developed… was only possible because HeLa cells were able to survive in Vitro. The HeLa cells were easy to infect and study, and therefore provided the perfect subject” (Bhavsar). The vaccine itself was developed by a scientists of the name of Jonas Salk. The ability for the cells to be easily infected allowed for the continued development of the polio vaccine.

Polio is an infectious viral disease that affects the central nervous system. The year 1950, a year before Henrietta Lacks died, was the peak of the polio

Polio: An American Story written by David Oshinsky highlights the journey to the discovery of a vaccine which would finally put an end to the once mysterious disease, Poliomyelitis. The journey begins in Otter Valley, Vermont, as it was the first Polio epidemic to be documented in the United States. Unknowingly, it would take years after the first epidemic in 1894 to find a solution for this frightening illness. The disease dates back to ancient time, with cases describing the victims to be left with disfigured limbs and some eventually to be paralyzed. Oshinsky identifies that the disease appeared in three phases: endemic, which occurs in a sporadically within a group of people, epidemic, in which it affected many people and spread rapidly,

Polio was always an issue in the early 20th century in the United States, with cases numbering the ten

Penn experienced this he lost a third of his passengers to smallpox, it had been spreading quickly. Especially in Europe, and it came with the Europeans that came to Pennsylvania. A big issue with smallpox was that the native Americans were really sensitive to it, so most of them got really sick and

Even though the government of Montreal was aware of the cholera epidemic that was occurring in other towns, the Board of Health was too late in establishing preventative sanitary measures in order to ensure the safety of the inhabitants. There was a lack of measures enforced that dealt with the “cleansing of the city, the removal of nuisances, the accommodation of the emigrants,” and other measures to alleviate the spread of the disease. By knowing how the Board of Health of Montreal dealt with the disease and what little was done beforehand to contain it, Philadelphia was able to create measures that could prevent the disease from spreading. For example, whenever the beginning stages of the disease were apparent, there would be prompt medical assistance made

Debate outline I. Introduction A. Did you know that president Roosevelt was not only a president but also created that national foundation for infantile paralysis when polio was on the rise as he too struggled with polio. This is now known as the March of Dimes. B. A fighting chance for every baby.

Pd.2 Compare and Contrast Yellow Fever Doctors In Philadelphia in 1793, a disease that filled the whole town with terror broke out and struck the world, yellow fever. The disease spread rapidly and killed an estimated 2,000-5,000 people. Long ago, the best doctors in America lived in Philadelphia during this epidemic disease. They studied yellow fever as best as they could with their prior knowledge from previous diseases.

Before that, people used variolation to prevent getting a more serious version of smallpox. Variolation is when the patient is inoculated with live smallpox. But in a lot of cases around the world, the plan backfired, leading the individual to contract a full-blown case of the

During the antebellum period it was not yet known that microorganisms were the cause of the outbreaks. The people did not understand that poor hygiene was the cause of the epidemic. They did, however, begin to try and keep the streets and the cities cleaner, but were not sure it would help. The people started to distrust doctors and would flee the city in hopes of outrunning the epidemics. It did not always work and they would catch it

The “The Ghost Map” is a book written by Steven Johnson. In the book, the author explains to us why urban planning is necessary to prevent deadly diseases, such as the deadly cholera outbreak. In 1854, Cholera seized London with incredible force. A capital of more than 2 million people, London had just become as a one of the first modern cities in the society. But lacking the foundation necessary to sustain its dense population - garbage extraction, clean water sources, sewer systems - the city has grown to be the ideal breeding ground for a terrifying epidemic no one understands how to cure.