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Derek S. Linton. Emil von Behring: Infectious Disease, Immunology, Serum Therapy. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, vol. 255. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2005. xi + 580 pp. Tables. $65.00 (ISBN-10: 0-87169-255-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-87169- 255-9).
In the medical world of the late 1890s, only Louis Pasteur commanded greater admiration and respect than did Emil Behring. Whereas Pasteur had pointed with his vaccination program to how infectious diseases might be prevented, Behring's discovery of serotherapy showed how a disease, once under way, might be cured. Thus it appeared that a new golden age for mankind was at hand. Pasteur had died, but Behring was acclaimed for having saved the lives of countless children with his diphtheria antiserum. His recognition was capped by the award in 1901 of the first Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.
But Pasteur's name and fame live on, joined now in the medical pantheon by two other "greats" from the period, Robert Koch (Behring's sometime chief) and Paul Ehrlich (Behring's sometime colleague), while Behring seems to have been quite forgotten. It is the stated aim of the author of this interesting book to explore why this should be so, and to correct this historical error. To this end he...