Theodore Elliott Boyd

Years ago, summer months brought with them the fear of a dreaded disease that killed or maimed thousands of victims and frightened parents into keeping their children from crowds.

Fear of the dreaded crippler, poliomyelitis, is virtually non-existent now, thanks partly to the dedication of Theodore Boyd, a scientist from Ashland City, TN. Boyd was an assistant director of research for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis for 20 years, when polio vaccines were being discovered, tested and introduced to the public.

Most of the credit for winning the battle against polio goes to Dr Jonas Salk, who discovered in the early 1950s a vaccine that was administered by injection, and to Dr. Albert Sabin discoverer of the oral polio vaccination used in America today.

But Boyd, an elderly gentleman now living in the Sycamore Hills Community between Ashland City and Pleasant View, TN, was also an important figure involved at the national level in the battle against polio.

Boyd -- then a tall, lean man with a wisp of a moustache--interviewed and negotiated with scientists applying for grants from the foundation, which, incidentally, financed research for both the Salk and Sabin vaccines.

In December 1953 during the early years of the polio battle, Boyd wrote a lengthy review, "Immunization against Poliomyelitis" that was needed to show health officials that the Salk vaccine should be tested.

(The report, sent to 200 people in mimeograph form, was published as a book after a slew of requests for the document.)

"We began to see that the Salk vaccine was ready for trial. We needed the consent and cooperation of health officials. They had to be shown that we had good reason to think there might be some good in what we were doing,"

Boyd said. "The Salk vaccine field trial was conducted the next summer, so that review did its work," he added.

Boyd also traveled to Russia in 1960 as part of the United States team invited to attend a conference there on the Sabin vaccine. Shortly after the conference between Russia and the United States, an international meeting was held in Moscow. The United States did not officially participate in the conference since Red China was taking part, but Sabin and Boyd attended as private citizens.

Boyd is described in Breakthrough, the Saga of Jonas Salk, a book by Richard Carter, as a "patient, encyclopedic" man who, along with the foundation's director of research Harry Weaver, spent many hours visiting the laboratories of foundation grants. In another book, Reflections on a life in Medicine and Science by Saul Benison, Boyd is described by Dr. Tom Rivers, a dominant figure for 40 years in virus research, as a "damn good" physiologist. "Theo Boyd is a physiologist and a damn good one...." the book quotes Rivers. "Boyd is an extremely unusual person and I suspect that the reason he hasn't reached a pinnacle in science is that he is one of those rare people who is not concerned about himself. There are not many around, you know. "Although Boyd has never worked with viruses in a laboratory, he is probably one of the best informed men about virology in the country and to my mind knows a great deal more about virology than a lot of so-called virologists," Rivers said in the book.

Theodore Elliott Boyd became interested in physiology while attending medical school at the University of Chicago. He entered medical school after he was shot during World War I and became eligible for four years of college paid for by the government. In 1923 he graduated with a degree in that field. He taught physiology for 24 years at Loyola University in Chicago, where he became head of the physiology department. In 1947 he joined the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and served as assistant director of research for 20 years. He later became director of research. He retired in 1967 and returned to the Sycamore Hills community in Cheatham County, TN where he lives with his wife, Mary. The Dean Road, April 2001, Vol 14 No. 51

Focus, The Tennessean, Wednesday, 3rd August, 1983.

Photo contributed by Alice Boyd Piper, daughter of Dr. Theodore E. Boyd, 5349 Canal Road, Dimondale, MI 48821

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