First cure for diphtheria by antitoxin as early as 1891

Oedingen, Christina; Staerk, Joseph

doi:10.1080/00033799700200411

Cited by 4 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Despite clear evidence showing that macrophages and other phagocytic cells digest and destroy microbes (20), by the early 1900’s it was also clear that antibodies against exotoxin mediated immunity to tetanus and diphtheria (21). Soon thereafter, it was shown that passive transfer of serum from immunized donors alone could protect naïve recipients from subsequent infections (22). As it became undeniable that antibodies are central protective elements for many pathogens, questions about the events governing antibody production and how antibody structure influences antibody function began to take hold.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here, There, and Anywhere? Arguments for and against the Physical Plasma Cell Survival Niche

Wilmore

Allman

2017

The Journal of Immunology

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To maintain antibody titers individual plasma cells must survive for extended periods, perhaps even for the life of the host. While it is clear that plasma cell survival requires cell extrinsic signals, the nature and source of these signals remains open for debate. It is commonly postulated that plasma cells only gain access to these signals within specialized regulatory microenvironments, or niches, in the bone marrow or in the gut. Here we discuss current concepts and information surrounding plasma cell survival niches, and consider two opposing models to explain long-term serologic immunity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here, There, and Anywhere? Arguments for and against the Physical Plasma Cell Survival Niche

Wilmore

Allman

2017

The Journal of Immunology

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“…When Wernicke gave the animal his most potent strain of the bacillus, it died in agony within 12 hours. 5…”

Section: The Strangling Angelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a 1997 article, Christina Oedingen and Joseph Staerk of the Behring Archive discovered evidence that antitoxin serum was indeed used during the 1891 Christmas season. They found a photo of Wernicke and Behring where the former wrote on the four borders of the margins of the image, “On 22 December 1891, the first child was treated with Diphtherielheilserum produced by myself and the child was cured.” 5…”

Section: The Strangling Angelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found a photo of Wernicke and Behring where the former wrote on the four borders of the margins of the image, "On 22 December 1891, the first child was treated with Diphtherielheilserum produced by myself and the child was cured." 5 Wernicke and Geissler later conducted an abbreviated trial during Behring's absence in mid-January 1892 that Behring summarily stopped when he returned. Neither the December case nor the January trial was written up.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Christmas Miracle of Emil von Behring

Nakayama

2022

The American Surgeon™

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The foundation story of immunology is the Christmas miracle of Emil von Behring, whose diphtheria antitoxin was first used to save the life of a child on Christmas Day 1891. Modern scholarship has dismissed it as historically and scientifically implausible: Behring’s lab did not have enough antitoxin serum for use in humans, and Ernst von Bergmann had prohibited its use at the Charité. But antitoxin was tried that December by their assistants, Erich Wernicke, who processed injected rams and horses and harvested the serum for Behring, and Heinrich Geissler, who was one of Bergmann’s house physicians. Especially during the Christmas season, it is easy to imagine Wernicke and Geissler bypassing protocol and giving the serum a try as a last-ditch effort to save a dying child. Derek Linton, a Behring biographer, wrote: A harried nurse confronted by a dying infant belatedly remembers that a doctor with a promising remedy for diphtheria urged her to bring hopeless cases to his attention and has him roused from his slumber on the other side of Berlin in the middle of the night on December 20, 1891. The injection of his wonder serum then rapidly resuscitates the comatose infant. Five days later, the parents celebrate the most joyous Christmas of their lives with their fully recovered daughter.

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“…26 Behring's letters to Wernicke give no indication of the subject of their quarrel (Schulte 2000, 77). 27 This was already the third clinical trial: One initial test took place around Christmas 1891 in the Surgical Clinic of the University of Berlin (Oedingen and Staerk 1997;Wernicke 1931), probably followed by other unsystematic tests on children in January 1892 (Behring to Wernicke, 31 January 1892, in EBA, 08-01, No. 1046).…”

Section: Immunization and Immunitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting Cultural Boundaries in French and German Diphtheria Serum Research

Klöppel

2008

Sci Context

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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.

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First cure for diphtheria by antitoxin as early as 1891

Cited by 4 publications

References 6 publications

Here, There, and Anywhere? Arguments for and against the Physical Plasma Cell Survival Niche

Here, There, and Anywhere? Arguments for and against the Physical Plasma Cell Survival Niche

The Christmas Miracle of Emil von Behring

Enacting Cultural Boundaries in French and German Diphtheria Serum Research

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