Acute ascending myelitis following a monkey bite, with the isolation of a virus capable of producing the disease

New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1934. First edition.

SABIN'S DRAMATIC HUMAN CASE REPORT AND ISOLATION OF HERPESVIRUS SIMIAE (B VIRUS) IN RABBIT.

24.5 x 16.5 cm journal extract, pp 115-136 (including 1 fever chart, 3 tables), 3 plates. Near fine in archival custom clear polypropylene binder.

GARRISON-MORTON No. 4658: isolation of herpesvirus simiae (B virus).

ALBERT BRUCE SABIN (1906 – 1993) was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease. In 1921, he emigrated with his family to New York. In 1930, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. After earning his MD from New York University in 1931, he trained in internal medicine, pathology, and surgery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1931 to 1933 (the year he performed the research reported in the paper offered here). In 1934, he conducted research at The Lister Institute for Preventive Medicine in England, then joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1939, he moved to Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Maintaining his association with Children's Hospital, by 1946, he had also become the head of Pediatric Research at the University of Cincinnati. With the menace of polio growing, Sabin and other researchers, most notably Jonas Salk in Pittsburgh and Hilary Koprowski and H. R. Cox in New York City and Philadelphia, respectively, sought a vaccine to prevent or mitigate the illness. This was complicated because there were multiple strains of the disease. Sabin developed an oral vaccine based on mutant strains of polio virus that seemed to stimulate antibody production but not to cause paralysis. Between 1955 and 1961, the oral vaccine was tested on at least 100 million people in the USSR, parts of Eastern Europe, Singapore, Mexico, and the Netherlands. The first industrial production and mass use of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) from Sabin strains was organized by Soviet scientist Mikhail Chumakov. This provided the critical impetus for allowing large-scale clinical trials of OPV in the United States in April 1960 on 180,000 Cincinnati school children. The mass immunization techniques that Sabin pioneered with his associates effectively eradicated polio in Cincinnati.