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ARTICLE IN PRESS European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Available online at
ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com
Editorial
Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .
My very dear colleagues, My father, who was Swiss, died a few days after I was born, and I bear his given name. The youngest of three children, I was brought up by my mother, who was French. I myself took French nationality in 1889, and it was in France that my extraordinary career was to begin. The year before this happy event, I wounded myself while autopsying a patient who had died of rabies, and Pierre-Paul-Emile Roux saved my life by injecting me with his new serum and invited me to come and work with him. And that is what I did, after a spell in Robert Koch’s Berlin laboratory. On my return from Germany, I launched various research projects with Roux, while at the same time pioneering the teaching of microbiology. That was in the Pasteur Institute, which had just been set up in Paris. And it was Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the target of Trousseau’s wrath and the specter haunting your specialty at that time that was to reveal my genius. Under Roux’ watchful eye, I was able, in the space of a few weeks, to demonstrate that the disease was caused by a toxin secreted by the bacterium. This discovery led to our Institute’s anti-diphtheria serotherapy and to the development of Behring’s vaccine. My academic career was apparently laid out before me. . . But what I wanted was to explore the wide world; leaving everything behind me, I took a job as physician on board the steamboat plying between Saigon and Manila. In 1892, I explored the high plateaux of Indochina, and was the founder of the city of Dalat. In 1894, I was sent to Hong Kong, to study the plague then ravaging China. I arrived there on June 15, just after Shibasaburo Kitasato, the great Japanese bacteriologist and discoverer of tetanus. Within a week, I had isolated a bacterium I baptized Pasteurella Pestis in honor of my master. Traveling by the British Royal Mail, my results were published in French by the Academy of Science, while Kitasato made the same discovery and published in The Lancet in August 1894. The little scientific world of the time was duly rocked by a battle for anteriority for this major breakthrough (our Institute was to suffer the same misadventure more than a century later. . .). At this point, my activities began to diversify, but with a common thread of seeking the well-being of the Asian population and the poor. I set great store by ethics, which was the compass guiding my every act; as you may imagine, I am delighted that ethics has
Fig. 1.
been introduced in the entrance exam for medical studies in France. This was the perspective in which, in 1895, I founded a laboratory in Nha Trang to develop serums to treat the many epidemics that were decimating the natives. I had discovered this site on the request and with the help of the French colonial administration as a suitable place for a convalescence station for French colonists and soldiers. To finance what would become one of the overseas Pasteur Institutes, I grew maize and coffee and introduced the rubber plant to Indochina. The Michelin Company was my biggest customer, taking profitable advantage of my research! I opened a stud-farm, where I tried out fifteen or more serums against the plague, obtaining a 90% success rate. At the same time, I was managing the Hanoi Medical
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004 1879-7296/© 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Werner A, et al. Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004
G Model ANORL-389; No. of Pages 2 2
ARTICLE IN PRESS Editorial / European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
School. Around 1920, when the Great War had interrupted quinine supplies from Peru and malaria was running out of control, I decided to produce quinine myself and started cultivating the plant from which it comes: Quinquina or Cinchona ledgeriana. Once again, I was granted land by a well-intentioned colonial administration. Which just goes to show that when medicine and the bureaucracy work together in a spirit of mutual understanding, good things can happen . . . I kept nothing for myself and led a Spartan existence, fighting against the poverty and suffering of the local people. In return, they held me in unwavering affection, as my nickname, “Fifth Uncle”, testifies. After the War, I spent most of my time in Nha Trang. I was appointed honorary director of the Pasteur Institute in 1933, and was considered by colleagues as one of the greatest geniuses of the age. The high school in Dalat still bears my name, as do several other medical and non-medical educational establishments. I was a tireless worker with many and varied centers of interest: I was engaged in the study of tidal effects when harsh conditions, malaria and illness in general finally got the better of me, on March 1st, 1943. My funeral was followed by thousands in Indochina, the land I had come to love. The epitaph on my gravestone calls me a “benefactor of humanity and of the Vietnamese people”. A few yards away, the pagoda erected in my memory, with my portrait hanging in pride of place, is a shrine that worshippers have never abandoned.
Oh, and I nearly forgot: in 1970, Pasteurella Pestis was renamed Yersinia Pestis after me. So now you know who I am: physician, scientist, agronomist, explorer and entrepreneur (Fig. 1). . . Alexandre Emile John Yersin. A. Werner 18, rue de la Ferme, 92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France I. McGill Place du Plâtre, 69930 Saint-Laurent de Chamousset, France O. Laccourreye ∗ Université Paris Descartes Sorbonne Paris Cité, Service d’Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Georges Pompidou European Hospital, AP–HP, 20-40, rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Laccourreye)
Please cite this article in press as: Werner A, et al. Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004
ARTICLE IN PRESS European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Available online at
ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com
Editorial
Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .
My very dear colleagues, My father, who was Swiss, died a few days after I was born, and I bear his given name. The youngest of three children, I was brought up by my mother, who was French. I myself took French nationality in 1889, and it was in France that my extraordinary career was to begin. The year before this happy event, I wounded myself while autopsying a patient who had died of rabies, and Pierre-Paul-Emile Roux saved my life by injecting me with his new serum and invited me to come and work with him. And that is what I did, after a spell in Robert Koch’s Berlin laboratory. On my return from Germany, I launched various research projects with Roux, while at the same time pioneering the teaching of microbiology. That was in the Pasteur Institute, which had just been set up in Paris. And it was Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the target of Trousseau’s wrath and the specter haunting your specialty at that time that was to reveal my genius. Under Roux’ watchful eye, I was able, in the space of a few weeks, to demonstrate that the disease was caused by a toxin secreted by the bacterium. This discovery led to our Institute’s anti-diphtheria serotherapy and to the development of Behring’s vaccine. My academic career was apparently laid out before me. . . But what I wanted was to explore the wide world; leaving everything behind me, I took a job as physician on board the steamboat plying between Saigon and Manila. In 1892, I explored the high plateaux of Indochina, and was the founder of the city of Dalat. In 1894, I was sent to Hong Kong, to study the plague then ravaging China. I arrived there on June 15, just after Shibasaburo Kitasato, the great Japanese bacteriologist and discoverer of tetanus. Within a week, I had isolated a bacterium I baptized Pasteurella Pestis in honor of my master. Traveling by the British Royal Mail, my results were published in French by the Academy of Science, while Kitasato made the same discovery and published in The Lancet in August 1894. The little scientific world of the time was duly rocked by a battle for anteriority for this major breakthrough (our Institute was to suffer the same misadventure more than a century later. . .). At this point, my activities began to diversify, but with a common thread of seeking the well-being of the Asian population and the poor. I set great store by ethics, which was the compass guiding my every act; as you may imagine, I am delighted that ethics has
Fig. 1.
been introduced in the entrance exam for medical studies in France. This was the perspective in which, in 1895, I founded a laboratory in Nha Trang to develop serums to treat the many epidemics that were decimating the natives. I had discovered this site on the request and with the help of the French colonial administration as a suitable place for a convalescence station for French colonists and soldiers. To finance what would become one of the overseas Pasteur Institutes, I grew maize and coffee and introduced the rubber plant to Indochina. The Michelin Company was my biggest customer, taking profitable advantage of my research! I opened a stud-farm, where I tried out fifteen or more serums against the plague, obtaining a 90% success rate. At the same time, I was managing the Hanoi Medical
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004 1879-7296/© 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Werner A, et al. Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004
G Model ANORL-389; No. of Pages 2 2
ARTICLE IN PRESS Editorial / European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
School. Around 1920, when the Great War had interrupted quinine supplies from Peru and malaria was running out of control, I decided to produce quinine myself and started cultivating the plant from which it comes: Quinquina or Cinchona ledgeriana. Once again, I was granted land by a well-intentioned colonial administration. Which just goes to show that when medicine and the bureaucracy work together in a spirit of mutual understanding, good things can happen . . . I kept nothing for myself and led a Spartan existence, fighting against the poverty and suffering of the local people. In return, they held me in unwavering affection, as my nickname, “Fifth Uncle”, testifies. After the War, I spent most of my time in Nha Trang. I was appointed honorary director of the Pasteur Institute in 1933, and was considered by colleagues as one of the greatest geniuses of the age. The high school in Dalat still bears my name, as do several other medical and non-medical educational establishments. I was a tireless worker with many and varied centers of interest: I was engaged in the study of tidal effects when harsh conditions, malaria and illness in general finally got the better of me, on March 1st, 1943. My funeral was followed by thousands in Indochina, the land I had come to love. The epitaph on my gravestone calls me a “benefactor of humanity and of the Vietnamese people”. A few yards away, the pagoda erected in my memory, with my portrait hanging in pride of place, is a shrine that worshippers have never abandoned.
Oh, and I nearly forgot: in 1970, Pasteurella Pestis was renamed Yersinia Pestis after me. So now you know who I am: physician, scientist, agronomist, explorer and entrepreneur (Fig. 1). . . Alexandre Emile John Yersin. A. Werner 18, rue de la Ferme, 92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France I. McGill Place du Plâtre, 69930 Saint-Laurent de Chamousset, France O. Laccourreye ∗ Université Paris Descartes Sorbonne Paris Cité, Service d’Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale, Georges Pompidou European Hospital, AP–HP, 20-40, rue Leblanc, 75015 Paris, France ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Laccourreye)
Please cite this article in press as: Werner A, et al. Abecedarium: Who Am I? Y’. . .. European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck diseases (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anorl.2014.11.004
