Diphtheria - History

History

The disease was named by French doctor Pierre Bretonneau in 1826 (substituted for his earlier term diphthérite).

In 1878, Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Alice and her family became infected with it, causing two deaths, Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice herself.

In the 1920s, there were an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 cases of diphtheria per year in the United States, causing 13,000 to 15,000 deaths per year. Children represented a large majority of these cases and fatalities. One of the most famous outbreaks of diphtheria was in Nome, Alaska; the "Great Race of Mercy" to deliver diphtheria antitoxin is now celebrated by the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

One of the first effective treatments for diphtheria was discovered in the 1880s by U.S. physician Joseph O'Dwyer (1841–1898). O'Dwyer developed tubes that were inserted into the throat, and prevented victims from suffocating due to the membrane sheath that grows over and obstructs airways. In 1884, Friedrich Loeffler discovered the causative organism (Corynebacterium diphtheriae). In December 1890, the German physician Emil von Behring developed an antitoxin that did not kill the bacterium, but neutralized the toxic poisons the bacterium releases into the body. Von Behring discovered that animal blood has antitoxins in it, so he took the blood, removed the clotting agents and injected it into human patients. "The paper shook the scientific world. Work on diphtheria at a level of intensity heretofore unknown proceeded in laboratories. Over the Christmas holiday in 1891 in Berlin, the first attempt to cure a person of diphtheria was made. It succeeded. . . . It was the first cure." Von Behring was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in the discovery, and development of a serum therapy for diphtheria. (Americans William H. Park and Anna Wessels Williams, and Pasteur Institute scientists Emile Roux and Auguste Chaillou also independently developed diphtheria antitoxin in the 1890s.) The first successful vaccine for diphtheria was developed in 1913 by Behring. However, antibiotics against diphtheria were not available until the discovery and development of sulfa drugs.

The Schick test, invented between 1910 and 1911, is a test used to determine whether or not a person is susceptible to diphtheria. It was named after its inventor, Béla Schick (1877–1967), a Hungarian-born American pediatrician. A massive five-year campaign was coordinated by Dr. Schick. As a part of the campaign, 85 million pieces of literature were distributed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company with an appeal to parents to "Save your child from diphtheria." A vaccine was developed in the next decade, and deaths began declining in earnest in 1924.

In early May 2010, a case of diphtheria was diagnosed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. The 15-year-old male patient died while workers searched for antitoxin.