Enacting Cultural Boundaries in French and German Diphtheria Serum Research

Abstract

ArgumentThe experimental development of a therapeutic serum against diphtheria between 1891 and 1894 was characterized by a scientific competition that pitted Emil Behring from the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin against Émile Roux and Elie Metschnikoff from the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In general, their competition can be regarded as an extension of the fundamental differences that separated the research schools of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. However, to characterize the competition for a diphtheria-serum as “national rivalry” fails to account adequately for the mutual adoption of experimental practices by the Berlin and Parisian protagonists, whose contributions to the development of a therapeutic serum were intertwined in complex ways. Nor can it be characterized as “cooperation,” given their fierce public disputes over scientific concepts and the fact that these disputes also shaped the peculiarities of the experimental procedures in Berlin and Paris. A close analysis reveals a complex picture of the dynamic interaction between the conceptual and experimental activities of Behring, Roux, and Metschnikoff – interaction that defined as well as bridged the “French” and “Prussian” experimental systems of diphtheria-serum research.

An Epidemic for Sale: Observation, Modification, and Commercial Circulation of the Danysz Virus, 1890–1910

“…In Paris, both Metchnikoff and his student I. G. Sawtchenko expanded Behring's work in observations about the mechanisms that drove the rat's immunity against bacteria. 39 Contrary to Behring, and in accordance with the dominant research axioms at the Institut Pasteur, Sawtchenko had run a series of experiments to establish that while rat serum was bactericidal in vitro, anthrax remained lethal to rats in almost all cases in which it was injected subcutaneously. However, rats would develop immunity if the bacteria were first introduced in the peritoneal cavity, rather than into the bloodstream directly.…”

Origins and canons: medicine and the history of sociology

“…Across Europe, Britain and America, many individuals and groups worked to introduce various approaches and theories; for instance, the statistical methods of Adolphe Quételet (cf. Parodi et al, 2006: 358-9), the principles of pathological anatomy (Foucault, 1980;Lawrence, 1994), theories of contagionism (Ackerknecht, 1948), the experimental, laboratory sciences (as propounded by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and others, see Gelfand, 2002;Klöppel, 2008), Rudolf Virchow's social and political medicine (Viner, 1998) as well as his cellular theories of disease (Barberis, 2003: 64), and even the physiology of Claude Bernard (Coleman, 1985). It was not, however, until the 20th century that some of the disparate groups were successful in putting forward a new definition of health based in the new biological sciences, and able to utilize the sciences as a basis for a new 'medical' identity and practice.…”

Convalescent Plasma against COVID-19: A Broad-Spectrum Therapeutic Approach for Emerging Infectious Diseases

“…Passive immunity is a relatively old approach that dates back to 1890, decades before the development of antimicrobial therapies [10][11][12]. Emil Behring was the first to apply this approach against diphtheria and tetanus, for which he received the first Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1901 [13].…”