Die Geschichte der Diphtherie: mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Immunitätslehre

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"Die Geschichte der Diphtherie" by Emil von Behring is a scientific medical monograph written in the late 19th century. It traces the history, epidemiology, and clinical understanding of diphtheria with special emphasis on immunity and serum therapy, arguing that the disease can be prevented and effectively treated. The work blends historical critique, clinical observation, and experimental insight to show how ideas about contagion, croup, and immunization converged.

The opening of the treatise begins with a foreword that quantifies diphtheria’s heavy toll on children, declares it a preventable disease, and proposes serum from immunized animals as a practical tool for cure and prophylaxis; it also explains the plan to precede experiments with a historical survey and acknowledges help in gathering the literature. A contents list maps sections on epidemiology, etiology, therapy, immunization, and serum properties. The text then presents an open letter by P. Bretonneau arguing from observation that diphtheria spreads chiefly by direct inoculation and contact rather than through the air, illustrated by comparisons to smallpox and vivid transmission cases, with editorial notes clarifying dates and modern views on fetal smallpox. The subsequent historical-critical discussion praises Bretonneau’s unification of croup and malignant angina as one infectious process, warns against authority-driven but misleading separations, and stresses that clinical course must guide reading of pathology. It reviews unusual portals of entry, treats a “scorbutic” gingival form as diphtheritic (and possibly immunizing), and distinguishes scarlatinous angina from diphtheria. The excerpt closes as the author begins a precise anatomical account of diphtheritic inflammation.