Infection beyond doubt that certain diseases are caused by infectious agents, and developed a vaccine for rabies. Robert Koch, provided the study of infectious diseases with a scientific basis known as Koch's postulates. Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed effective vaccines for smallpox and polio, which would later result in the eradication and near-eradication of these diseases, respectively. Alexander Fleming discovered the world's first antibiotic, Penicillin, which Florey and Chain then developed. Gerhard Domagk developed sulphonamides, the first broad spectrum synthetic antibacterial drugs. The medical treatment of infectious diseases falls into the medical field of Infectious Disease and in
Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver possess the virus. It then describes how this vaccine was only slightly different from the type invented by Edward Jenner two centuries earlier, which was so successful that smallpox became the first and only disease to ever be eradicated. Vaccine developers profiled in the book include Jonas Salk (p. 188) and Maurice Hilleman (p. 238). Allen, later in the book, describes the controversy over vaccines and autism and the founding of SafeMinds, writing, "The vaccines-cause-autism mindset was the product of a set of assumptions that were impossible to completely prove or disprove." (p. 374) It also discusses how preliminary study