Jonas Salk's 100th Birthday

I am going to come straight with you on this one. When it comes to leading lights in vaccinations, most of my historical knowledge ends with perhaps the man we could call the Godfather of Vaccinations, Edward Jenner. Jenner, of course, invented the vaccination for smallpox and started a revolution in medical science. As with an appreciation of the role bacteria play, vaccinating distinguishes itself to the majority of medical treatments in its proactive nature. It puts into the practice the principle that prevention is always better than the cure. By administering a controlled dosage of a disease - in Jenner's case cowpox - an individual's immune system can be activated and thus prevented from contracting a debilitating or potentially fatal disease - in Jenner's case small pox. A continued campaign of vaccinations can completely drive out a disease in a country, as it has done with many deadly diseases we all feared on a relatively short time ago.

Sheridan La Fanu Honoured on Google

“But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.”

― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, “Carmilla”

I am delighted to see that Google has decided to celebrate the 200^th birthday of the Irish author, Sheridan Le Fanu, today. Le Fanu was a prolific writer who is best remembered for his mystery and horror fiction. Unlike other several other Gothic writers of the 19^th century, such as Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, Le Fanu was totally dedicated to a career in writing. He studied law at Trinity College, Dublin and was called to the bar in 1839, but already had his mind on journalism. A year previously his first ghost story, “The Ghost and the Bone Setter” signposted where Le Fanu’s literary influence would lie. From 1840 he would become the owner of several newspapers and would go on to write many books and short stories.