This set is now listed in the same auction room on December 12, lot 35 estimated $ 200K. I narrated it last year as follows :
The epidemics of poliomyelitis increased at the end of the 19th century to become a highly worrying public health problem at the beginning of the 20th century. The attack by the virus damages the spinal cord.
This infectious disease is incurable. It was defeated by the vaccines. Its total eradication is on the WHO agenda.
In 1949 J. F. Enders, T. H. Weller and F. C. Robbins working together in a laboratory at the Boston Children's Hospital published the results of their research in the journal Science under the title 'Cultivation of the Lansing Strain of Poliomyelitis Virus in Cultures of Various Human Embryonic Tissues'.
Before them the virus was mostly grown in vivo on monkeys. Weller and Robbins directed by Enders reached a decisive achievement by doing this culture in a test tube without using nerve cells. Thereafter the strain growth became easy and cheap. Several vaccines developed by other teams went into mass production in the next eight years.
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to these three virologists in 1954.
SOLD for $ 200K including premium