Standardization and Clinical Use:The Introduction of the Anti-Diphtheria Serum in Lyon
Résumé
The serotherapy used to treat diphtheria starting in the 1890s involved injecting serum separated out from blood drawn from horses that had been immunized against the toxin responsible for the ravages of the disease. Thus, this therapy used a biological product in a double sense of being a product of biological origin (and organic composition), and being prepared by the specific biological (immunological - to talk anachronistically) functioning of a living organism. The central producer of this innovative biological drug in France was the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and much has been already been published about the work of Emile Roux and his colleagues in producing and distributing the serum. Here, I want to take the case of serum production and compare this with its use in Lyon and the surrounding region. In this context I distinguish between what I term 'industrial standardization' on the productions side and 'clinical standardization' on the side of the use of the product notably in hospitals. These two approaches to standardization are quite different both in terms of their goals and their application.