Polio Vaccine

It was once one of the most feared human afflictions – a disease that struck without warning, crippling and killing thousands each year.

In the early 1900s, the search for a vaccine that would eradicate poliomyelitis (better known as polio) was a quest that frustrated even the brightest minds in medicine. Despite massive funding, polio remained a serious threat in both developing and industrialized nations through the mid-20th century. But then in the early 1950s, a young American doctor named Jonas Salk made a revolutionary breakthrough that forever changed the world of medicine and ultimately saved millions of lives – he discovered a successful vaccine.

In this dramatic story brought to you by THE HISTORY CHANNEL^®, meet polio victims who describe the disease’s horrors and scientists who recount the great medical triumph that would later spare the lives of so many.