IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB916226058

‘A remedy for this dread disease’: Achille Sclavo, anthrax and serum therapy in early twentieth-century Britain (2022)

British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 55
Issue: 2
Pages: 207-226
Publication date: 2022
Language: English

URI: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/remedy-for-this-dread-disease-achille-sclavo-anthrax-and-serum-therapy-in-early-twentiethcentury-britain/DBFFB0865A244BB7B34C290BB08FD690

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087422000012

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

In the years around 1900 one of the most significant practical consequences of new styles of bacteriological thought and practice was the development of preventive vaccines and therapeutic sera. Historical scholarship has highlighted how approaches rooted in the laboratory methods of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur and their collaborators were transformed in local contexts and applied in diverse ways to enable more effective disease identification, prevention and treatment. Amongst these, the anti-anthrax serum developed by the Italian physician Achille Sclavo (1861–1930) has received little to no attention from historians. This article positions Sclavo's serum as a neglected but significant presence in British microbiology, which achieved widespread uptake amidst a wave of optimism, despite prolonged uncertainty about its mechanism of action and dosage. After being introduced to Britain in 1904 by the enterprising first medical inspector of factories Thomas Morison Legge, within a matter of months the serum became regarded by medical practitioners as an effective treatment of cutaneous anthrax, though access to ‘fresh’ serum and the necessary speedy diagnosis remained problematic. Like the disease anthrax itself, discussion of ‘Sclavo's serum’ was out of all proportion to the relatively low number of cases, reflecting a deep-seated fascination with the wider possibilities afforded by effective serum therapy.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB916226058

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Jones, Susan D.; Teigen, Philip M.; (2008)
Anthrax in Transit: Practical Experience and Intellectual Exchange (/p/isis/citation/CBB000850412/)

Article Stark, James F.; (2012)
Bacteriology in the Service of Sanitation: The Factory Environment and the Regulation of Industrial Anthrax in Late-Victorian Britain (/p/isis/citation/CBB001210693/)

Article Stark, James F.; (2012)
Anthrax and Australia in a Global Context: The International Exchange of Theories and Practices with Britain and France, c. 1850--1920 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001200700/)

Article Katrina Ford; (2018)
Keeping the Country Clean: Animal Diseases, Bacteriology, and the Foundations of Biosecurity in New Zealand, 1890–1910 (/p/isis/citation/CBB708308397/)

Article Richardson, Ruth; (2013)
Inflammation, Suppuration, Putrefaction, Fermentation: Joseph Lister's Microbiology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320254/)

Article Sankaran, Neeraja; (2008)
Stepping-Stones to One-Step Growth: Frank Macfarlane Burnet's Role in Elucidating the Viral Nature of the Bacteriophages (/p/isis/citation/CBB000932000/)

Article Alfons Billiau; (2016)
At the Centennial of the Bacteriophage: Reviving the Overlooked Contribution of a Forgotten Pioneer, Richard Bruynoghe (1881–1957) (/p/isis/citation/CBB358016676/)

Article Flavio D'Abramo; Sybille Neumeyer; (2020)
A Historical and Political Epistemology of Microbes (/p/isis/citation/CBB158989443/)

Article Marcella Tamburello; Giovanni Villone; (2017)
Vincenzo Tiberio: la prima antibiotico-terapia sperimentale in vivo (/p/isis/citation/CBB360249828/)

Article Kuznetsov, Vyacheslav A.; (2014)
Professor Yakov Yulievich Bardakh (1857--1929): Pioneer Of Bacteriological Research in Russia and Ukraine (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421990/)

Book Dolman, Claude E.; Wolfe, Richard J.; (2003)
Theobald Smith, Microbiologist: Suppressing the Diseases of Animals and Man (/p/isis/citation/CBB000330967/)

Article Sankaran, Neeraja; (2014)
When Viruses Were Not in Style: Parallels in the Histories of Chicken Sarcoma Viruses and Bacteriophages (/p/isis/citation/CBB001421657/)

Article Summers, William C.; (2011)
Views and Commentary: In the beginning.... (/p/isis/citation/CBB001221105/)

Thesis Kym Weed; (2018)
Our Microbes: Imagining Human Interdependence with Bacteria in American Literature, Science, and Culture, 1880-1920 (/p/isis/citation/CBB507631304/)

Article Valentina Gazzaniga; Silvia Marinozzi; (2017)
De Carbone, Sive Carbuncolo. Il Carbonchio nella Pubblicistica Italiana dalla Restaurazione all'Unità (/p/isis/citation/CBB317291966/)

Book Gradmann, Christoph; (2009)
Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001020408/)

Chapter Carter, Tim; Melling, Joseph; (2012)
Trade, Spores, and the Culture of Disease: Attempts to Regulate Anthrax in Britain and Its International Trade, 1875--1930 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001251710/)

Article Stark, James F.; (2011)
A Poster of Pustules: Representations of Early Twentieth-Century Industrial Anthrax in Britain (/p/isis/citation/CBB001210123/)

Book Michael Dwyer; (2018)
Strangling Angel: Diphtheria and Childhood Immunization in Ireland (/p/isis/citation/CBB799026134/)

Article Amsterdamska, Olga; (2004)
Achieving Disbelief: Thought Styles, Microbial Variation, and American and British Epidemiology, 1900--1940 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000501620/)