Emil Adolf von Behring

Emil Adolf von Behring was born at Hansdorf, Kreis Rosenberg in Province Westpreussen, Germany as Emil Adolf Behring. Between 1874 and 1878, he studied medicine at the Army Medical College in Berlin. He was German bacteriologist who is considered the founder of the science of immunology. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on serum therapy, especially its application against diphtheria. Behring served with the Army Medical Corps before becoming assistant (1889) at Robert Koch's Institute of Hygiene, Berlin. There, with the Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo, he showed that it was possible to provide an animal with passive immunity against tetanus by injecting it with the horse blood serum of another animal infected with the disease. In collaboration with Paul Ehrlich, Behring then applied this technique of antitoxic immunity (a term which he and Kitasato originated) to prevent diphtheria. The administration of diphtheria antitoxin, which was successfully marketed in 1892, became a routine part of the treatment of the disease. Behring taught at Halle (1894) and at Marburg (1895). He became financially involved with the Farbwerke Meister, Lucius und Brüning in Höchst, a dyeworks that provided laboratories for his researches, which included studies of tuberculosis. He devised a vaccine (bovovaccine) for immunization of calves against the disease. Behring won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901 for his work on serum therapy, especially against diphtheria.  

The clinical case definition of diphtheria is An upper respiratory tract illness characterized by sore throat, low-grade fever, and an adherent membrane of the tonsil(s), pharynx, and/or nose. Laboratory criteria for diagnosis   Isolation of Corynebacterium diphtheriae from a clinical specimen, or Histopathologic diagnosis of diphtheria   Case classification robable: a clinically compatible case that is not laboratory confirmed and is not epidemiologically linked to a laboratory-confirmed case Confirmed: a clinically compatible case that is either laboratory confirmed or epidemiologically linked to a laboratory-confirmed case Comment From the CDC guidelines: Cutaneous diphtheria should not be reported. Respiratory disease caused by nontoxigenic C. diphtheriae should be reported as diphtheria. All diphtheria isolates, regardless of association with disease, should be sent to the Diphtheria Laboratory, National Center for Infectious Diseases, CDC. 

Writings of Emil Adolf von Behring include Die praktischen Ziele der Blutserumtherapie (1892; "The Practical Goals of Blood Serum Therapy") and Ätiologie und ätiologische Therapie des Tetanus (1904; "The Etiology and Etiological Therapy of Tetanus").