Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object

Diphtheria Serum as a Technological Object is a succinct book examining a pharmaceutical innovation and its dispersal and circulation across borders. It is clearly written and argued and merits inclusion in research libraries as well as in graduate seminars on the history of medicine, French institutional history, and the history of technology. It will also appeal to those interested in the scholarly turn toward object-based ontologies and how this perspective can illuminate pharmaceutical history. * H-France Review *
Although Simon’s approach is avowedly drawn from the philosophy of technology, his study enriches our historical understanding of the history of the diphtheria antiserum in refreshing and unexpected ways. In their effect on human bodies, medicines are, after all, as much technological objects as scalpels and syringes, and this understanding gives Simon’s study originality and message. From his account of how the serum was made using the blood of specially selected and cared-for horses, through to his masterly analysis of how the serum was inserted into France’s political economy as an instrument of revenge on German medical science for defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, this is no standard history of drug development. * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *
With his in-depth study of the history of diphtheria antiserum in France, Simon makes an original and valuable contribution to the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine. Building on his own extensive and highly regarded earlier work on the history of chemistry and pharmacy, Simon convincingly shows that medicines such as diphtheria antiserum are more than just material objects. They are special technological objects, given form and sense by the context in which they are adopted in and the many roles they fulfill, in return shaping the societies in which they are deployed. The relatively short time-frame (1894-1900) as well as the single national context chosen for his study allow Simon not only to perform a synchronic slice across different spaces, but to engage with philosophical issues about the nature of technology whilst developing a sophisticated and original methodological framework for doing so. -- Viviane Quirke, Oxford Brookes University