History
Justinus Kerner described botulinum toxin as a "sausage poison" and "fatty poison", because the bacterium that produces the toxin often caused poisoning by growing in improperly handled or prepared meat products. It was Kerner, a physician, who first conceived a possible therapeutic use of botulinum toxin and coined the name botulism (from Latin botulus meaning "sausage"). In 1897, Emile van Ermengem found the producer of the botulin toxin was a bacterium, which he named Clostridium botulinum. In 1928, P. Tessmer Snipe and Hermann Sommer for the first time purified the toxin. In 1949, Arnold Burgen's group discovered, through an elegant experiment, that botulinum toxin blocks neuromuscular transmission through decreased acetylcholine release.
Read more about this topic: Botulinum Toxin
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (18721945)