He was German and a bacteriologist.
Bacteriology studies specific types of microbes. And this gentleman who would die in March 1917, years ago, contributed to defeating a terrible disease that terrified humanity for centuries: diphtheria.
His name was Emilio Adolfo Behering, his last name is the same as a strait that runs from Russian Siberia to Alaska, on our continent. Although our man today is written, with an h in the middle: Behering.
He worked as a hygiene teacher in a German city. He was also a great observer.
On one occasion, studying animals who had had diphtheria and survived To this scourge, a fact that caught his attention because it was always fatal, it occurred to him that in the blood of these animals, perhaps there had been a process that would definitively immunize them against the terrible microbe that causes that disease.
Then he extracted serum of the blood of those animals cured, and brought him into contact with the toxins of the killer microbe. And he verified amazed that this, the microbe, could not act. He lost the destructive power of it.
Antidiphtheria serum had been discovered.
Behering was in his early 40s at the time.
Prestige and economic well-being come together.
But “can either money They do not change the man. “They just show it.” And his success showed him humble, sober, measured. And almost without pause he began to fight another terrible scourge: the bacillus that produced tetanus, a disease infectionsoh deadly in all cases.
In a short time he also discovered an anti-tetanus serum. Another defeated disease: tetanus.
His fame exceeds the borders of Germany, his homeland.
But he continues to live in a small town of 5,000 inhabitants, playing pool with his friends, growing flowers in his garden.
And the new century arrives. And the Nobel Prizes were born in 1901.
They will be awarded annually.
These are rewards that exceed $100,000.
Currently they are much larger, close to a million dollars.
The Nobel Prize is awarded to the most outstanding figures in the world in Literature, Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and to the fighters for Peace in the world.
Unanimously, the first Nobel Prize in Medicine – that of 1901 – will be awarded to a 47-year-old German scientist. Emilio Augusto Behering.
Four years later, in 1905, another German doctor, also a bacteriologist, Robert Koch, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
He had discovered the tuberculosis bacillus.
And in 1908 a third Nobel Prize, also in Medicine and for another German.
With a preparation called Salvarsan, Pablo Ehrlich manages to defeat syphilis, a devastating disease, cruel and highly contagious.
Thus, the three doctors who won the Nobel Prize were German among the first eight winners.
I think it would be good to remember here that although Jorge Luis Borges did not win the Nobel Prize for literature, several Argentine scientists did: Dr. B. Houssay, Dr. Leloir, who died ……. years ago and more recently it was obtained by Dr. César Milstein.
Dr. Emilio Adolfo Behering was a man who was hurt by the pain of his neighbor.
And if we were all hurt by the pain of our neighbors, there would be almost no pain.
He was endowed with greatness and therefore could “see” more than most of his contemporaries.
What he couldn’t see was his own greatness.
And ultimately he fought to overcome diseases that had been hurting people for centuries. humanity.
His tenacity, his selflessness – because he wanted nothing for himself – and his talent, brought to my pen this aphorism that is inserted in the book……
“The good man suffers for other people’s things. But he is also happy for other people’s things.”
Source: Ambito
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