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 talks continually about getting out of the limelight and back to his laboratory ... because of his genuine distaste for publicity, which he believes is inappropriate for a scientist." During a 1980 interview, 25 years later, he said, "It's as if I've been a public property ever since, having to respond to external, as well as internal, impulses. ... It's brought me enormous gratification, opened many opportunities, but at the same time placed many burdens on me. It altered my career, my relationships with colleagues; I am a public figure, no longer one of them." "If Salk the scientist sounds