X-Nico

unusual facts about diphtheria



Alaska Communications System

The ACS also provided a vital lifeline - sometimes quite literally - to the many remote and almost inaccessible communities across Alaska: it enabled the icebound city of Nome to alert the outside world about a diphtheria outbreak which led to the successful 1925 serum run to Nome.

Balto

Balto (1919 – March 14, 1933) was a Alaskan Malamute sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska, to Nenana, Alaska, by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease.

DTAP

DTaP, a vaccine for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.

Hieronymus Fabricius

Marco Aurelio Severino (1580–1656), a skilful surgeon and anatomist, performed at least one tracheotomy during a diphtheria epidemic in Naples in 1610, using the vertical incision technique recommended by Fabricius.

John G. FitzGerald

John Gerald "Gerry" FitzGerald (December 9, 1882 in Drayton, Ontario – June 20, 1940) was a Canadian physician and public health specialist who was instrumental in the control of diphtheria, first by producing and freely distributing antitoxin, and then in 1924 by using mass production to enable widespread use of the vaccine devised by Gaston Ramon.

Jud Heathcote

Two years after his father died in a diphtheria epidemic of 1930, he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Manchester, Washington, where he lived the entire time he grew up.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist Emil Adolf von Behring, for his work on serum therapy and the development of a vaccine against diphtheria.

Passive immunity

In 1888 Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin isolated diphtheria toxin, and following the 1890 discovery of an antitoxin-based immunity to diphtheria and tetanus, by Emil Adolf von Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburō, antitoxin became the first major success of modern therapeutic immunology.

Past medical history

Immunizations: take a careful record of all immunizations, including tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, Hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, Haemophilus influenzae type B, influenza.

Synthetic vaccine

The world's first synthetic vaccine was created in 1982 from diphtheria toxin by Louis Chedid (scientist) from the Pasteur Institute and Michael Sela from the Weizmann Institute.

Tracheotomy

Marco Aurelio Severino (1580–1656), a skillful surgeon and anatomist, performed multiple successful tracheotomies during a diphtheria epidemic in Naples in 1610, using the vertical incision technique recommended by Fabricius.

Wilfrid Le Gros Clark

He caught diphtheria and was sent back to England to recover, following which he spent the remainder of the war as a medical officer at ‘‘No. 8 Stationary Hospital’’ at Wimereux in northern France.


see also