David Bodian

David Bodian (15 May 1910 – 18 September 1992) was an American medical scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who worked in polio research. In the early 1940s he helped lay the groundwork for the eventual development of polio vaccines by combining neurological research with the study of the pathogenesis of polio. With his understanding of the disease, he made a series of crucial discoveries that paved the way for the final development of a vaccine by Jonas Salk and later by Albert Sabin. He received the E. Mead Johnson Award in Pediatrics and the Karl Spencer Lashley Award for his work, along with numerous other distinctions.

Biography

Early life and education In 1910, David Bodian was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Ukraine. He grew up with his four sisters and younger brother in Chicago, where he attended public school. He would later enter Crane Junior College after graduating from high school. At first, he did not plan to continue his education after his undergraduate degree, but he received a $300 graduate scholarship that changed his mind. In the following year of 1938, Bodian spent a few months at the University of Michigan as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow under the direction of Elizabeth Crosby.

The process involves three major steps: silver impregnation, reduction, and toning. The impregnation step involves using a copper and Protargol bath to deposit silver along the nerve tissue, which allows for specific staining of certain parts of the nervous tissue and cells. The tissue is then placed into a reducing solution of hydroquinone. Lastly, the stain contrast and color is enhanced through the toning step with gold, in the form of gold chloride. This stain will appear as a dark brown color on parts of the nervous tissue such as the end-feet, myelinated fibers, and unmyelinated fibers.

Bodian would go on in 1937 to refine the selectivity of the staining process through adjusting the formulations for the fixatives used. Through these adjustments, Bodian was able to study the structure of the synapses of the goldfish and catfish and the nervous systems of frogs, rattlesnakes, and crayfish.

The team demonstrated that primates and humans gained artificial immunity through formalin-treated virus. Another result of these studies was the finding that immunity to a disease is correlated to the presence of its antibody. became a milestone in the development of new polio vaccine methods.

Honors and awards

Leaders in the effort against polio were honored at the opening of the Polio Hall of Fame on January 2, 1958. From left: Thomas M. Rivers, Charles Armstrong, John R. Paul, Thomas Francis Jr., Albert Sabin, Joseph L. Melnick, Isabel Morgan, Howard A. Howe, David Bodian, Jonas Salk, Eleanor Roosevelt and Basil O'Connor.

In 1941 Bodian received the E. Mead Johnson Award in Pediatrics from the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 1958, he was inducted along with his colleagues Howe and Morgan and twelve other polio experts into the Polio Hall of Fame at the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1958, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. and the American Philosophical Society in 1973. In 1985, the Society honored him with the Karl Spencer Lashley Award. Bodian was an honorary member of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the French Neurological Society, and the Mexican Society of Anatomy, and he served as the 48th president of the American Association of Anatomists from 1971 to 1972.

In 1980, the Johns Hopkins University dedicated the Bodian Room in the School of Medicine in recognition of his contributions to polio research. He received an honorary doctorate from the university in 1987. In the year before his death, in the spring of 1991, the School of Hygiene and Public Health named him one of seventy-five "Heroes of Public Health."