When people recover from bacterial illnesses, they often develop antitoxins that give them immunity against recurrence of the disease. An antitoxin is an antibody with the ability to neutralize a specific toxin.
One of the most popular antitoxins is the diphtheria antitoxin. In 1888, Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin showed that the toxins produced by the Corynebacterium diphtheriae causes symptoms of diphtheria in animals. Two years later, the first antitoxin to diphtheria was made when Shibasaburo Kitasato and Emil von Behring immunised guinea pigs with heat-treated diphtheria toxin. Behring received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1901.
It is believed that the diphtheria antitoxin was first used to treat a diseased human in 1891. Today antitoxins are used in the treatment of botulism, diphtheria, dysentery, gas gangrene and tetanus.
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