In the 20th century, polio was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases, devastating its victims. Ingenuity, trial and error, even acts of scientific desperation would pave the way to one of the greatest breakthroughs in scientific history - a vaccine. Modern Marvels traces the technology that eradicated the health scourge of the century.

French polio sufferers and vaccination

U.S. government film about the polio vaccine being administered to the residents of Columbus, Georgia, and the methods used to promote the vaccination campaign.

The discovery of a vaccine for polio in the 1950s has prevented millions of cases of this severe paralyzing disease. The Discovery of the Polio Vaccine examines this historic advance from multiple perspectives, including those of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and modern organizations working to wipe out polio once and for all.

This comprehensive and gripping narrative covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.

Caring for a runt lamb helps Pixie gain empathy when, in the 1940s, her family moves to her grandparents' farm and her sister Charlotte contracts polio and is sent away.

"In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political "natural." Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with charisma, he seemed destined for high office from birth. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and strategic ability. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his eight-year struggle through illness and recovery....