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Behring made major contributions to the understanding of the body 's immune system, discovered the first successful treatment for tetanus, and came to be known as the "Children's Savior" for his success in conquering diphtheria.
Behring was born in Deutch-Eylau, Prussia (now Ilawa, Poland) to a family of 12 children. He studied at the University of Berlin, earning his medical degree in 1880. He served several years as a surgeon in the Prussian Army Medical Corps. It was then that he became interested in infection and how substances in the blood fight disease.
In 1889, Behring went to the University of Berlin to work in the laboratory of Robert Koch. Behring made some of his most important discoveries while working there with the Japanese bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato. At the time, tetanus or lockjaw, a disease that causes muscle spasms, was widespread. Tetanus is brought about by toxins or poisons that are produced by bacteria. Behring and Kitasato injected the blood serum of an animal with tetanus into a healthy animal and found that the second animal developed an immunity to the disease. When serum from the immunized animal was injected into another animal, it produced immunity to tetanus as well. The two men studied how the blood produces substances that neutralize toxins. Behring called these substances antitoxins.
Diphtheria, a serious contagious bacterial disease that was a major killer of children, swept through Western Europe in the late 1800s. The death rate from diphtheria averaged thirty-five percent in general and ninety percent in cases involving the larynx. Behring suggested that the same principles of immunity that he and Kitasato discovered for tetanus be applied to diphtheria. In 1894, along with the French bacteriologist Pierre Roux, Behring developed a diphtheria antitoxin. Since then, researchers developed effective harmless forms of diphtheria toxin called toxoids that physicians use to immunize against diphtheria.
Behring became a professor at the University of Halle in 1894, and shortly after, at the University of Marburg. There he established what is known as the Behring Institute and continued one of his other research interests, the fight against tuberculosis. Behring was unable to find a tuberculosis vaccine, which was not discovered until 1924 with the work of French bacteriologists, Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin. Today, tuberculosis is under control thanks to the use of antibiotics.
Behring's vaccines helped to save the lives of millions of injured soldiers in World War I as well as countless others threatened by tetanus and diphtheria. For his work, Behring received the first Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1901.
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