Alexandre Yersin

Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin ( born September 22, 1863 in Aubonne, Switzerland, † February 28, 1943 in Nha Trang, Vietnam ) was a Swiss- French physician and bacteriologist who discovered the causative agent of plague, Yersinia pestis. To him, the entire bacterial genus Yersinia was named in honor.

Life

After years of study in Lausanne and Marburg Yersin went to Paris and worked at the Pasteur Institute, among others, along with Émile Roux diphtheria, she had a murmur diphtheria toxin after. He received his PhD in 1888 on experimental tuberculosis and visited the bacteriological course by Robert Koch in Berlin. In order to exercise the medical profession in France, he became a French citizen.

In Indochina, he worked from 1890 as a ship's doctor and undertook research trips there. As of Mongolia spreading plague in 1894 reached the South China coast, French Government and the Pasteur Institute sent him to Hong Kong to find the hitherto unknown cause of the disease. At the same time and with the same goal working there a Japanese research group led by Shibasaburo Kitasato. Although Yersin was not as well equipped and hampered by British colonial authorities in his work to him on June 20, 1894 led to the isolation of the pathogen from infected lymph nodes ( buboes ) of plague victims and the transmission of the disease to mice and guinea pigs. That he did not have, in contrast to Kita Sato group on an incubator and had to be cultured his bacterial cultures in normal air temperature in a bamboo hut, it was a fortunate circumstance, because under laboratory conditions, Yersinia pestis grown at temperatures that are lower than human body temperature better.

Yersin demonstrated experimentally that the identified by him plague pathogen was also responsible for the Hong Kong simultaneously occurring mass rats dying. This lack of full disclosure of the essential elements of the chain of infection of this zoonotic only the finding that plague through the bite of the rat flea from animals " skip " to humans. This should be three years later discover Masanori Ogata and Paul -Louis Simond in Bombay. The causative agent, the Kitasato in Hong Kong isolated and described as the cause of the plague, later proved to be random accompanying germ of the disease, yet Kitasato was long regarded as ( co-) discoverer of Pest Reger. 1970 received the bacterium its present name, in memory of the merits Yersin.

Yersin was born in Paris in 1895 and worked on the development of a healing serum, which he then in the Far East began in the treatment of plague victims, which, however, had no effect on the occurrence of plague in Bombay in 1897. In the following years he worked on behalf of the colonial administration in agricultural projects in Indochina, including the planting of Hevea brasiliensis for the production of rubber and cinchona Ledgeriana, a Chinarindenbaum tree, from the bark of the antimalarial agent quinine is made. In 1902 he was imprisoned for two years as director of the newly established School of paramedical staff in Hanoi, later the Medical College emerged from the. From 1904 to 1924 he headed the offices of the Pasteur Institute in Saigon and Nha Trang. He was appointed in 1934, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute in Paris and was appointed honorary director and chairman of the annual general meeting of the Institute.

The remembrance of Yersin is kept high in Nha Trang. In the Pasteur Institute there is a Yersin Museum, on the waterfront his monument. The people of the town thank him in particular is that it was Yersin predict typhoons, which many fishermen saved her life.

The Halsbandhäherling Garrulax yersini, a rare bird species occurring in Vietnam, is also named after Yersin.

Quotes

" Tu me demandes si je pratique médicale à la prends goût. Oui et non. J'ai beaucoup de plaisir à ceux qui soigner viennent me demander conseil, mais je ne voudrais pas faire de la médecine un métier, c'est -à -dire que je jamais pourrais demander à un malade de me payer pour des soins que j ' aurais pu lui donner. The Considère la médecine comme un sacerdoce, ainsi que le pastorate. Demander de l' argent pour un malade soigner, c'est un peu lui dire la bourse ou la vie. "

" You ask me whether I appreciate the medical practice. Yes and no. It gives me a lot of fun when I take care of those who come and ask for my advice, but I do not want to do medicine as a business, that is, that I could ask a patient never to pay me for help, the I can give him. I consider medicine as a priesthood similar to the office of pastor. From a hospital to demand payment for help, is similar to tell him money or your life. "