(Excerpt from Traité de l'Immunité: Dans les Maladies Infe...)
Excerpt from Traité de l'Immunité: Dans les Maladies Infectieuses Sa tâche principale, assurément, c'est letude de la pathogénie et de la guérison des maladies infectieuses. Elle considère le plus grand nombre possible d'exemples d'infection, analysant les réactions, dressant l'inventaire des propriétés physiologiques qui y participent, précisant dans quelle mesure chacune d'elles intervient dans les différents cas et comment elles se combinent. Elle nous explique pourquoi l'organisme peut échapper à l'invasion micro bienne ou vaincre finalement le parasite lorsque celui - ci est parvenu à s'installer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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immunologist microbiologist scientist
Bordet was born in 1870 at Soignies, Belgium. He was the second son of Charles Bordet, a schoolteacher, and Célestine Vandenabeele Bordet.
The family moved to Brussels in 1874, when his father received an appointment to the École Moyenne, a primary school.
Jules attended this school and then received their secondary education at the Athéné Royal of Brussels.
He entered the medical program at the Free University of Brussels at the age of sixteen, receiving his doctorate of medicine in 1892.
For this work, the Belgian government awarded him a scholarship to the Pasteur Institute, and from 1894 to 1901, Bordet stayed in Paris at the laboratory of the Ukrainian-born scientist Élie Metchnikoff .
Soon after his arrival at the Institute, he began work on a problem in immunology.
In 1894, Richard Pfeiffer, a German scientist, had discovered that when cholera bacteria was injected into the peritoneum of a guinea pig immunized against the infection, the pig would rapidly die.
Moreover, the bacteriolysis did not take place when the bacteria and the antiserum were mixed in a test tube unless fresh antiserum was used.
However, when Bordet heated the antiserum to 55 degrees centigrade, it lost its power to kill bacteria.
In a series of experiments conducted later, Bordet also learned that injecting red blood cells from one animal species (rabbit cells in the initial experiments) into another species (guinea pigs) caused the serum of the second species to quickly destroy the red cells of the first.
And although the serum lost its power to kill the red cells when heated to 55 degrees centigrade, its potency was restored when alexine (or complement) was added.
It became apparent to Bordet that hemolytic (red cell destroying) serums acted exactly as bacteriolytic serums; thus, he had uncovered the basic mechanism by which animal bodies defend or immunize themselves against the invasion of foreign elements.
Eventually, Bordet and his colleagues found a way to implement their discoveries.
They determined that alexine was bound or fixed to red blood cells or to bacteria during the immunizing process.
When red cells were added to a normal serum mixed with a specific form of bacteria in a test tube, the bacteria remained active while the red cells were destroyed through the fixation of alexine.
Hence, it was possible to visually determine the presence of bacteria in a patient's blood serum.
This process became known as a complement fixation test.
Bordet and his associates applied these findings to various other infections, like typhoid fever , carbuncle, and hog cholera.
August von Wasserman eventually used a form of the test (later known as the Wasserman test) to determine the presence of syphilis bacteria in the human blood.
Already famous by the age of thirty-one, Bordet accepted the directorship of the newly created Anti-rabies and Bacteriological Institute in Brussels in 1901; two years later, the organization was renamed the Pasteur Institute of Brussels.
Despite his other activities, he continued his research in immunology and bacteriology.
Between 1901 and 1920, Bordet conducted important studies on the coagulation of blood.
In 1940, Bordet retired from the directorship of the Pasteur Institute of Brussels and was succeeded by his son, Paul.
Bordet himself continued to take an active interest in the work of the Institute despite his failing eyesight and a second German occupation of Belgium during World War II.
Many scientists, friends, and former students gathered in a celebration of his eightieth birthday at the great hall of the Free University of Brussels in 1950.
(Excerpt from Traité de l'Immunité: Dans les Maladies Infe...)
In March 1916, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1899, Bordet married Marthe Levoz; they eventually had two daughters, and a son who also became a medical scientist.
