Parution – Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950

Christoph Gradmann , Jonathan Simon (eds), Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 288 p.

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.

Sommaire

Introduction; Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents, 1890-1950; C.Gradmann& J.Simon

Paul Ehrlich’s Standardization of Serum; Wertbestimmung and its Meaning for Twentieth-Century Biomedicine; C-R.Pruell

Evaluation as a Practical Technique of Administration: The Regulation and Standardisation of Diphtheria Serum; A.Hüntelman

From Diphtheria to Tetanus: The Development of Evaluation Methods for Sera in Imperial Germany; A.I.Hardy

The Construction of a Culture of Standardization at the Institut Pasteur, 1885-1900; G.Gachelin

Quality Control and the Politics of Serum Production in France; J.Simon

‘The Geneva serum is excellent!’ Autonomy and Isolation in Swiss Cantons during the Early Years of Diphtheria Serum: the Case of Geneva; M.Kaba

The State, The Serum Institutes and The League of Nations; P.Mazumdar

Questions of quality: The Danish State Serum Institute, Thorvald Madsen and biological standardisation; A.Hardy

‘The Wright Way’: The Production and Standardisation of Therapeutic Vaccines in Britain, 1902-1913; M.Worboys

The Visible Industrialist: Standards And The Manufacture Of Sex Hormones; J-P.Gaudillière

‘We need for digitalis preparations what the state has established for serumtherapy…’: From Collecting Plants to International Standardization: the Case of Strophanthin, 1900-1938; C.Bonah

Changing Regulations and Risk Assessments. National Responses to the Introduction of Inactivated Polio Vaccine in the UK and the FDR 327; U.Lindner Standardization before Biomedicine: On Early forms of Regulatory Objectivity; A.Cambrosio

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