If you've been following our blog over the past few months, you'll notice that our look has changed. Our website, historyofvaccines.org, is now in previews after several years of planning and about a year of development.
The site provides a historical and scientific context for the development of immunizations. It features not only holdings of the Historical Medical Library and Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, but also images, text, and video from a variety of public and private sources.
We invite you to explore the site -- the media-rich timelines on yellow fever, polio, smallpox, measles, diphtheria, and other diseases; the educational activities on how vaccines work, how vaccines are made, and how the scientific method is employed; the variety of articles on social and medical issues surrounding vaccination; and the gallery, which houses over 400 images and videos.
The History of Vaccines will officially launch on November 3, 2010, with an event here in Philadelphia: Stanley A. Plotkin, MD, developer of the rubella vaccine in current worldwide use, and emeritus professor of The Wistar Institute and The University of Pennsylvania, will give the Samuel X Radbill lecture entitled "Four Centuries of Vaccinology." Register HERE for the free event.
If you'd like to be notified about future History of Vaccines events and content releases, join our email list. More
Cholera affects 3-5 million people each year, killing more than 100,000. The diarrheal disease, spread by contaminated food and water, is often a major problem in disaster areas where a clean water supply and sanitation facilities are limited or unavailable.
Anna Dhody, Mütter Museum Curator, today describes another item in the museum's recently unveiled Rarely Seen exhibit. A vital tool in biomedical research, this bacterial incubator was used to grow and sustain cell and microbiological cultures. The incubator mimicked the optimal environmental conditions for a particular organism when the researcher adjusts the humidity, temperature, and atmospheric conditions. Manufactured by the ELCONAP, Electric Heat Control Apparatus Co. of Newark, New Jersey, this incubator was used by Robert Austrian, MD (1916-2007), a pioneering physician, epidemiologist, and microbiologist in researching infectious diseases. Dr. Austrian was also a Fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia from 1963 to 2007 and served as its President from 1988 to 1990. 
Mütter Museum Curator Anna Dhody describes the iron lung featured in the museum's new exhibit, Rarely Seen. This exhibit offers visitors a glimpse of objects that have not been displayed for decades or are recent acquisitions that have never been exhibited. Some of the instruments represent the pinnacle of medical knowledge for their time, while others had mixed and sometimes detrimental medical results.
We hosted a contest for fans of the Mütter Museum/The College of Physicians of Philadelphia on Facebook.They had a chance to win prizes (a stuffed pathogen, a cool keychain, and a calendar) from the Mütter Museum store. The contest is now over!
The New York Times on October 5 ran a short piece on 
A global effort to eradicate polio began in 1988. At the time, the disease was endemic in more than 125 countries; by 2006, only Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan still saw endemic polio transmission. Still, despite this progress, the disease has stubbornly refused to disappear completely.
Here at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, our own Mütter Museum is preparing an exhibit entitled Rarely Seen: Hidden Collections of the Mütter Museum. Visitors will have the chance to see some rarely or never before seen items. Too large to display in the permanent museum galleries, these fascinating objects will briefly have a home in our temporary exhibit space. Of particular interest to the History of Vaccines project is an iron lung manufactured by J.H. Emerson Co. as well as a bacterial incubator used by Robert Austrian, MD, a pioneer researcher in pneumococcal disease and developer of the polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine. This exhibit will be on display from October 2010 through January 2011.
In anticipation of the launch of the full History of Vaccines website on September 29, we offer here an excerpt from our collection of smallpox information.
Before Robert Chanock, MD, joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 1957, researchers had not identified a culprit for a constellation of serious respiratory illnesses that affected infants and children each year, particularly in the winter. Soon after Chanock joined NIAID’s Laboratory of Infectious diseases, however, he and his colleagues identified and named the virus: respiratory syncytial virus. RSV, as it is commonly known, is the most common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia among American children less than one year of age.