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by Derek S. Linton (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol 255), 580 pp, $65, ISBN 0-87169-255-4, Philadelphia, Pa, American Philosophical Society, 2005.

JAMA. 2006;295:2539-2540.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Emil Behring (the honorific title "von" was awarded him by the German Emperor in 1901) was a giant of early immunology, ranking with Koch, Pasteur, Roux, Ehrlich, Metchnikoff, and others. His main and most important contribution was serum therapy of diphtheria and tetanus, which brought him the Nobel Prize in 1901 (the first Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology) "for his works in serum therapy and especially its use against diphtheria" and countless other awards and honors.

von Behring made other important discoveries and worked on a number of problems fundamental to early immunology. One only has to mention his observation and description of serum sickness, which sometimes developed following the injection of his antitoxic serum, and his efforts to decrease the symptoms of this harmful reaction by purification of the antitoxic sera.

von Behring was first to recognize that bovine tuberculosis was an important source of tuberculosis in humans, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Stanislaw Dubiski, MD, PhD (retired), Reviewer
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
sta.dubiski@utoronto.ca

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