![]() ![]() So now doctors were faced with a conundrum: how to balance the risks of serum sickness with the benefits of controlling diphtheria outbreaks through preventative antitoxin injections? Enter the Schick test. (Von Pirquet and Schick coined the word “allergy” in 1906.) What patients were experiencing was in fact an allergic reaction to horse proteins present in the antitoxin serum. Their research demonstrated that patients who were repeatedly injected with serum suffered not only more intense bouts of sickness with each successive injection, but in some cases, antitoxin injections resulted in dangerous anaphylaxis. In 1905, Austrian pediatricians Clemens E. von Pirquet and Béla Schick published the results of their investigation into this phenomenon, in their treatise Serum Sickness (in the original German, Die Serumkrankheit.)īéla Schick, 1929. In some patients, injections of antitoxin resulted in an immune reaction characterized by fever, rash, swelling of the glands, and joint pain. An injection conferred immunity on a patient for approximately three weeks.Īs with many miracles, however, antitoxin came with a hitch: serum sickness. Doctors quickly recognized its potential as a prophylactic and began controlling outbreaks by dosing residents and employees of closed-quartered institutions like hospitals and orphanages with serum after coming into contact with an infected person. diphtheria’s toxin in the body, became used for more than just treating the infected. Soon the antitoxin, which works to neutralize the effects of C. “Injecting Diphtheria Antitoxin,” illustration from a Parke Davis publication, 1895.Ĭourtesy The Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. It should come as no surprise then, when Emil von Behring developed diphtheria antitoxin serum as a cure in the 1890s it was hailed as nothing short of a miracle. Its terrifying symptoms-from slowly poisoning the victim to forming a pseudomembrane in the throat causing slow suffocation-are the stuff of nightmares. As curators of our most recent exhibition, From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry, Diane and Mallory spent months researching four different microbes and the influence they’ve had on human life.Ĭorynebacterium diphtheria, the bacteria which causes diphtheria, is easily the nastiest microbe we researched for From DNA to Beer. Circulating Now welcomes guest bloggers Diane Wendt and Mallory Warner from the Division of Medicine and Science at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. ![]()
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