Emil von behring biography definition us history

Emil von Behring is remembered for his discovery of tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins, for which he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Physiology-Medicine in Trained as a military physician at Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelms Institute, Behring earned his MD in after serving for several years in the Prussian military. It was in these latter contexts that Behring began to turn his attention to the use of disinfectants to stop the spread of infectious diseases.

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During the s, Behring focused his research on the effects of iodoform, a battlefield antiseptic that was also rather poisonous, concluding that iodoform's disinfectant action was due not to its efficacy as a parasiticide, as had been supposed, but as an antitoxin. He then became preoccupied with antitoxic blood-serum therapy.

After a stint at Bonn's pharmacological institute, Behring returned in to Berlin, where he served briefly at the Academy for Military Medicine before joining Robert Koch in his laboratory at the Institute for Hygiene at the University of Berlin, becoming Koch's full-time assistant in Between and , Behring pioneered advances in serum therapy and developed his theory of antitoxins.

Beginning in , he worked in Berlin with Kitasato Shibasaburo to isolate and define the agent known to neutralize anthrax bacilli in white rats. Although their short-term hope was to create a suitable disinfectant against anthrax, they remained alert to the possibility of finding a serum antitoxin. In late , Behring and Kitasato jointly published their first paper on blood-serum therapy.

A second publication, signed only by Behring, followed rapidly on the first; in this latter report, Behring considered serum therapy for tetanus and diphtheria.