Jonas Salk when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague", said historian William L. O'Neill. "Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS
Lee Salk his older brother. Salk attended the University of Michigan. Salk's published work investigated the effect of retirement on mortality, the effect of the mother's heartbeat on the newborn, and the relationship between adverse maternal and perinatal conditions and later self-destructive behavior. He was the author of eight books. Salk was married twice, first to Kerstin and then Mary Jane. He had two children from his first marriage, a son Eric and daughter Pia. Salk developed cancer and died in hospital in Manhattan at age 65 on May 2, 1992. Salk was a professor at Cornell University Medical Center. Lee Salk