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:
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)