Dr. Salk invented the first effective Polio vaccine. Polio paralyzed upwards of 20,000 children every year - the remainders of their lives were spent in restrictive metal braces at best and living in an iron lung at the worst.
There is a great writeup at Slate Magazine.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA where Salk was developing the vaccine - my school was one of the test sites and we had to go through no end of injections and swallowing sugar cubes.
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