Emil von Behring Facts
Emil von Behring Facts
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| Interesting Emil von Behring Facts: |
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| Behring was born Adolf Emil Behring in Province of Prussia, now part of Poland. |
| He was the eldest of 13 children of a Hansdorf schoolmaster. |
| Because his family could not afford to send him to university, he attended the Army Medical College in Berlin from 1874 to 1878 which obligated him to military service for several years after graduation. |
| During his military service he found time to study the problems of septic disease and the use of iodoform as an antiseptic. |
| His publication attracted the attention of the military health officials. |
| He was sent first to Bonn for further training in scientific methods and later back to Berlin where he worked with Robert Koch. |
| Combining his study of the research by Pasteur, Koch Ehrlich, Loffler, and Yersin with his own work on iodoform, Behring began to experiment with disinfection of living organisms to stimulate immunity in animals. |
| His experiments were primarily with diphtheria and tetanus bacilli. |
| In 1890 Behring and S. Kitasato published the results of their experiments that graduated doses of sterilized cultures caused the test animals to produce antitoxins in their blood. |
| They also proved that the antitoxins produced by one animal could provide immunity from infection in another animal. |
| Later work also proved that the antitoxins produced by one animal could actually cure another animal showing symptoms of the disease. |
| In 1913 Behring announced his production of a mixture of neutralized diphtheria antitoxin and subsequent work on this mixture resulted in the modern immunization against diphtheria. |
| In 1901 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and received a noble title. |
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