William Brebner was dead at the age of twenty-nine. What killed him? Was it polio? Was it rabies? A fellow researcher in the same NYU lab, just out of medical school but bright and ambitious, assisted at Brebner’s autopsy and then made a further investigation, using bits of Brebner’s brain, spinal cord, lymph nodes, and spleen. This man was Albert B. Sabin, decades before his fame as creator of an oral polio vaccine.
