Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950: (Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History)

Following the testing of therapeutic sera, the quantified evaluation of a pharmaceutical's efficacy became a key feature of medicine in the twentieth century. The case studies in this volume offer comparisons across Europe, from the diphtheria antitoxin in the late 1800s to the introduction of the Salk polio vaccine in the 1950s.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction; Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950; C.Gradmann & J.Simon Paul Ehrlich's Standardization of Serum; Wertbestimmung and its Meaning for Twentieth-Century Biomedicine; C-R.Pruell Evaluation as a Practical Technique of Administration: The Regulation and Standardisation of Diphtheria Serum; A.Hüntelman From Diphtheria to Tetanus: The Development of Evaluation Methods for Sera in Imperial Germany; A.I.Hardy   The Construction of a Culture of Standardization at the Institut Pasteur, 1885-1900; G.Gachelin Quality Control and the Politics of Serum Production in France; J.Simon 'The Geneva serum is excellent!' Autonomy and Isolation in Swiss Cantons during the Early Years of Diphtheria Serum: the Case of Geneva; M.Kaba The State, The Serum Institutes and The League of Nations; P.Mazumdar Questions of quality: The Danish State Serum Institute, Thorvald Madsen and biological standardisation; A.Hardy 'The Wright Way': The Production and Standardisation of Therapeutic Vaccines in Britain, 1902-1913; M.Worboys The Visible Industrialist: Standards And The Manufacture Of Sex Hormones; J-P.Gaudillière 'We need for digitalis preparations what the state has established for serumtherapy…': From Collecting Plants to International Standardization: the Case of Strophanthin, 1900-1938; C.Bonah Changing Regulations and Risk Assessments. National Responses to the Introduction of Inactivated Polio Vaccine in the UK and the FDR 327; U.Lindner Standardization before Biomedicine: On Early forms of Regulatory Objectivity; A.Cambrosio Index

About the Author :
CHRISTOPH GRADMANN is Professor in the History of Medicine at the University of Oslo, Norway, since 2006. He took his doctorate as a historian from the University of Hannover in 1992, and has held positions at the University of Heidelberg and the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His research interests cover the history of infectious diseases in modernity, the history of antibiotic resistance, medical biography and the history of standardisation in twentieth century medicine. His most recent book publication is Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology. JONATHAN SIMON teaches history of science at the University of Lyon, France. After receiving a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh he has studied and taught in Berlin, Paris, Sydney and Strasbourg. He has worked and published in both the history of pharmacy and the history of chemistry; most recently he is the co-author (with Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent) of Chemistry: The Impure Science.

Review :
'...Christoph Gradmann, Jonathan Simon and their co-contributors throw new light on the origins of biomedicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' - Viviane Quirke, Oxford Brookes University, Journal of BJHS