Jonas Edward Salk (28 October 1914-23 June 1995) was an American medic who decided to become a virologist and medical researcher instead of a physician. After initially working on flu virus, he started research on different variants of poliovirus from 1948. For the next 7 years he and his team devoted their efforts into developing a vaccine for polio. The field trial for the vaccine he developed was arguably one of the most extensive and elaborate processes undertaken globally. It involved 20,000 experts including physicians, 64,000 school personnel and 220,000 volunteers. Ultimately, 1.8 million schoolchildren took part in the global trial. Before the introduction of the vaccine in 1955, polio was feared as much as the atomic bomb. Post world wars, polio raged, killing thousands of people and paralysing many others. In 1949, polio killed thousands but also left 1 in 1,000 children who had contracted it with paralysis. Although it killed fewer than the flu pandemic of 1918, its psychological effect, seeing so many children paralysed was profound. Even though there were no lockdowns, people sensibly avoided public places and isolated themselves as much as was possible. World travel was very limited and the spread of the disease was limited. At this time, “iron lungs” were invented to help prevent asphyxiation of the polio patients and this was considered revolutionary method of treatment which reduced death rates markedly.

In the midst of all this, Salk and his team were busy trying to find an effective vaccine against the virus. Despite being funded privately, Salk decided not to patent the vaccine and not to seek profit in order to ease its global use. He was hailed as a miracle worker. In 1963 Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California which is currently a centre for medical & scientific research.

Salk considered vaccination of children against diseases a “moral obligation” of parents and society. Since there is no known cure for any virus to date, vaccine seems the only defence against it. There are many parallels to the present day. Only that with the level of technology of today, we hope, it will not take 7 years to develop an effective vaccine against Coronavirus.

Avicenna, a physician from the age of 18, experimented with remedies from Persia, Greece and India to treat his patients often without asking for payment. He has written about diseases, insomnia, dementia, epilepsy amongst others and corrected Aristotle in the perception that light emanates from the mind through the eyes. He correctly showed that light first enters the eyes from the outside. The translation of his five volume encyclopaedia called Cannon of Medicine into Latin was used by Europeans as a standard textbook up until 1800. In Chemistry, he used steam distillation to produce plant oils such as rose essence which he used for aromatherapy remedies. In Mechanics, he made a distinction between the inclination (tendency to motion) and force of a projectile, and concluded that motion was a result of an inclination transferred to the projectile by the thrower, and that projectile motion in a vacuum would not cease. Avicennian logic also influenced several early European logicians such as Magnus and Ockham. Around the 1000 AD, Avicenna was considered as a replacement of Aristotle as the all-round scientist, scholar and philosopher of his time. His ideas on ethics are as valid and appropriate today as they were in 11th century.

Avicenna spent his life in pursuit of knowledge and when his friends asked him to slow down for his health, he famously replied “I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length”. He died in June 1037, in his fifty-six year, in the month of Ramadan and was buried in Hamadan, Iran. In 1980, the then Soviet Union which ruled his birthplace Bukhara, celebrated the thousandth anniversary of Avicenna's birth.