Natural scientific research in Canada Queen's/Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston, 1845, U of T/Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1875, UBC/Vancouver General Hospital, 1886, Dalhousie/Victoria General Hospital, Halifax, 1887 and the U of A/ the University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, 1906. The Connaught Laboratories in Toronto conducted groundbreaking research in the fifties with respect to the world's first polio vaccine. Working with Dr. Jonas Salk in the US, the laboratories developed a safe inactive vaccine using a new synthetic base, Medium 199. This permitted large volume production through a technique that came to be known as the "Toronto Method", which in turn allowed the mass vaccination campaigns
Jonas Salk of my first year of medical school, I received an opportunity to spend a year in research and teaching in biochemistry, which I did. And at the end of that year, I was told that I could, if I wished, switch and get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but my preference was to stay with medicine. And, I believe that this is all linked to my original ambition, or desire, which was to be of some help to humankind, so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis." Concerning his last year of medical school Salk says: