Food, film and plenty of information-sharing will be brought into focus Nov. 14-19, when UC celebrates International Education Week.
UC Libraries is participating in International Education Week with the exhibit Travel the World with UC Libraries, currently on display on Langsam Library’s 4th floor and featuring guidebooks, phrase books, and websites that will aid people in their travels. More information about the exhibit is available online.
Found in the Sabin Archives - Dr. Sabin receives “Rotary Award for World Understanding” at the 1985 RI Convention in Kansas City, Missouri.
October 24 is World Polio Day, which is sponsored by Rotary International. Since 1985, with the implementation of the PolioPlus program, this organization has been working to end polio throughout the world. As I had mentioned in my first blog post, there are only four countries in the whole world – Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan – where polio is still considered “endemic.” Due to the massive effort of Rotary International and its partners, through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, less than 1,700 polio cases were reported in 2009. World Polio Day is an effort to bring attention to the fight against polio. Rotary International’s “End Polio Now” website states, “As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk.” Continue reading
Saul Benison, PhD
Recently, I was reading a chapter on the history of polio research by Saul Benison, a former professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to coming to Cincinnati, Dr. Benison held a notable position as the historian for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (see a previous blog about this organization). During this time, he wrote a memoir of virologist Thomas Rivers, which received much acclaim when it was published in 1967. While at Cincinnati, Dr. Benison worked extensively on a biography – really an oral history – about Dr. Sabin, but this book was never published.
Dr. Benison’s chapter on polio research began in 1907 with Dr. Simon Flexner and discussed over 50 years of poliomyelitis research. Of course, no history of this disease can be covered without discussing Dr. Sabin. In one part of the chapter, Benison recalled a 1956 conference sponsored by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which gathered scientists together to help Dr. Sabin in “choosing stable nonpathogenic virus strains” for the oral polio vaccine (p. 331-32). Dr. Benison wrote that the information that Dr. Sabin received from this conference allowed him to “successfully [adapt] Dr. Renato Dulbecco’s plaquing techniques for the selection of attenuated virus strains suitable” for the vaccine (p. 332). Continue reading
On Saturday, October 22, the 5th annual Books by the Banks: Cincinnati USA Book Festival will take place at Duke Energy Convention Center from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The day-long festival will feature over 100 regional and national authors, book signings, author panels, and activities for the entire family to enjoy. All events are free and open to the public.
People love to travel; and UC students really love to travel. According to UC International, over the past five years, between 830 and 874 students participated in the study abroad programs annually. In addition, numerous UC faculty, students, and staff travel abroad for pleasure, business, performances, community service, and other reasons.
So what makes a successful travel experience? A good guidebook. UC Libraries’ print and digital collections provide excellent resources for travelers. Travel the World with UC Libraries, an exhibit currently on display on Langsam Library’s 4th floor, features guidebooks, phrase books, and websites that will aid people in their travels.
Join UC Libraries at a talk by renowned book conservator William Minter who will display and discuss the conservation treatment he did to the historic Martyrs Mirror. Scheduled for Friday, October 28th from 1:30-3:00pm in 814 Blegen, the talk is free and open to the public. A Q&A will follow and refreshments will be served.
A recent Wired.com blog post highlighted an important day in the development of the oral polio vaccine: October 6, 1956. On this date, Dr. Sabin gave an invited paper at the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine meeting held in Cincinnati. His paper was called “Vaccination against Poliomyelitis – Present and Future.” It was at this meeting that Dr. Sabin reported that he had developed a polio vaccine using three attenuated poliovirus strains, which provided an “immunizing, symptomless infection” when it was administered orally to over 50 volunteers. He also announced that his live-virus polio vaccine was ready to be tested on “increasingly larger numbers of humans both in this country and in association with qualified investigators abroad.”[1]
Front page of program from Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine meeting, October 6, 1956
In the days following this meeting, several newspapers covered the contents of his paper, with headlines such as:
In Hal Hellman’s Greatest Feuds in Medicine: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever, one chapter is devoted to the dispute between Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk. Hellman chose this dispute as one of the ten that had “some special drama or scientific interest, that in some way influenced the future course of medical science, or that have had repercussions in our own day” (p. xiii). The chapter briefly discusses the history of polio and the development of the two vaccines, as well as the aftermath. Hellman argued that “Salk deserved better treatment” from his fellow scientists (p. 141). However, he also wrote, “But we must remember that in the Sabin-Salk feud there is no real victor” (p. 140).
Letter from Dr. Sabin to Dr. Bauer, May 1953
In his analysis of the Sabin-Salk “feud,” Hellman mentions an incident in early 1953, where information about the killed-virus vaccine was leaked to the public prior to the publication of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The newspaper articles about Salk’s vaccine gave the public hope in the fight against polio. On the other hand, these same newspaper articles painted Salk as a “glory hound” in the eyes of his fellow scientists (p. 136). Continue reading
Missy Lodge (center), Associate State Librarian for Library Development, State Library of Ohio, awarding the grant to Jason Buydos, Assistant Director - Support Services, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County; and Holly Prochaska, Head, Preservation Services and of the Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library, University of Cincinnati Libraries
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County was awarded a $81,012 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the State Library of Ohio to establish a joint Conservation Lab with the University of Cincinnati Libraries for the preservation and protection of rare and heavily used materials.
The fall “Life of the Mind” lecture series will kick off Tuesday, October 18 from 3:30-5pm in the Russell C. Myers Alumni Center. Free and open to the UC community and public, “Life of the Mind” features interdisciplinary conversations with UC faculty around a one-word theme followed by audience Q&A. The fall “Life of the Mind” theme is “War.”