Karen Torgaly

And it was called the Sabin test.

That's how he got his start in virology and his interest in virology.

He became convinced that he needed to work with viruses and he needed to specialize in polio because it took such a toll.

Every year, every summer, there would be epidemics of polio and many children died.

Many were paralyzed and many were infected and didn't die, but he could see that this was a big need right now.

He had originally gone into pediatrics, so having all those children die and being a witness to them in those years was a life-changing experience for him.

They had at the time some iron lungs, but they never had enough.

So there would be wards full of children lined up with just their heads sticking out and not able to breathe on their own and not able to be with their families or with anybody but the medical staff.

No one was allowed to visit them because of the danger of being infected themselves.

and that really impacted him.

He did lots of the lab tests himself.

He did autopsies on kids who died.

So that's how he started to get involved with polio, and that's the path he took in his life.

During World War II, he was commissioned by the Army to be on a specialist team of elite scientists who could help identify viruses that the soldiers would be exposed to that they had never been exposed to before.

So, Sabin was on this commission.

He wanted to enlist, and he wanted to be close to the front lines where people were getting sick, so he could get to them as quickly as possible.

So, even though he was blind in one eye, and he was 37 years old, and would never have been drafted, he went to enlist in the army, and they took him.

He looked into sample life fever.

He looked into dengue and encephalitis and polio.

He would go and find what the carriers were of these viruses and where they lived, how they infected creatures and people, and then what they could do to prevent the illness in the soldiers.