Introduction: Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890–1950

Abstract

This book treats the history of the evaluation of medicine in terms of testing for efficacy as it evolved from the late nineteenth century onwards. Starting with the use of serum as a specific treatment for diphtheria and tetanus in the 1800s, such testing procedures brought industrial and medical cultures into contact over the production and use of medicines. The result was the elaboration of standards that covered the production of medicines and their clinical use. The handling of therapeutic sera thus became a model for the evaluation and marketing of other medicines such as cardiacs or hormones in the twentieth century. Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950 helps us to understand the historical roots of certain aspects of today's pharmaceutical industry as well as modern medical practice, which have both become increasingly technically exigent, integrating high standards of quality and efficacy in every aspect of their functioning. "This book provides an examination of the regulations that have been successively put into place since the Second World War to standardize the quality and criteria of pharmaceutical products, vaccines and medicines"--Provided by publisher. Cover; Contents; List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Introduction: Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950; 1 Paul Ehrlich's Standardization of Serum: Wertbestimmung and Its Meaning for Twentieth-Century Biomedicine; 2 Evaluation as a Practical Technique of Administration: The Regulation and Standardization of Diphtheria Serum; 3 From Diphtheria to Tetanus: The Development of Evaluation Methods for Sera in Imperial Germany; 4 The Construction of a Culture of Standardization at the Institut Pasteur (1885-1900).