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We released the following show on the history of vaccines back in early April 2020 when the idea of a COVID 19 vaccine seemed little more than distant fantasy. \n\nJust this past Monday, on December 14, Sandra Lindsay, the director of critical care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens became the first American to receive the Pfizer COVID 19 vaccine in a non-trial setting. And so this week we\u2019re re-releasing this show \u2014 in a much more hopeful context this time around.\n\nThis is the story of the polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin -- and then a look at the origin of the vaccine itself, first developed to combat smallpox almost 225 years ago, thanks to Edward Jenner and a cow named Blossom.\n\n----\n\nIn 1916 New York City became the epicenter of one of America\u2019s very first polio epidemics.\n\nThe scourge of infantile paralysis infected thousands of Americans that year, most under the age of five. But in New York City it was especially bad. The Department of Health took drastic measures, barring children from going out in public and even labeling home with polio sufferers, urging others to stay away.\n\nThat same year, up in the Bronx, a young couple named Daniel and Dora Salk \u2014 the children of Eastern European immigrants \u2014 were themselves raising their young son named Jonas. As an adult, Jonas Salk would spend his life combating the poliovirus in the laboratory, creating a vaccine that would change the world.\n\nIn 1921 a young lawyer and politician named Franklin Delano Roosevelt would contract what was believed at the time to be polio. He would use his connections and power \u2014 first as governor of New York, then as president of the United States \u2014 to guide the nation\u2019s response to the virus.\n\n----\n\nAND THEN: The second half of the show is devoted to the question \u2014 who came up the first vaccine anyway?\xa0\n\nOnce upon a time there was a country doctor with a love of birds, a milkmaid with translucent skin, an eight-year-old boy with no idea what he's in for and a wonderful cow that holds the secret to human immunity.\n\nThis is the story of the first vaccine, perhaps one of the greatest inventions in modern human history. Come listen to this remarkable story of risk and bravery which led to the eradication of one of the deadliest diseases in human history.\n\nAnd hear the words of Dr. Edward Jenner himself, written in the first weeks of his experiments!\n\nboweryboyshistory.com\n\nSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys