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Social History of Medicine 2003 16(3):437-459; doi:10.1093/shm/16.3.437
© 2003 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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‘In the Silence of the Laboratory’:

The League of Nations Standardizes Syphilis Tests

Pauline M. H. Mazumdar

Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, 73 Queen's Park Crescent E., Room 316, Victoria College, Toronto, M5S 1K7, Canada. E-mail: pmazumda{at}chass.utoronto.ca

The standardization of sera and other biologicals was a major part of the programme of the League of Nations' Health Organization from its foundation in 1921 to the outbreak of the Second World War. According to the League's Covenant, technical committees were supposed to work on technical problems only, free of all political constraints. This was the ideal that the Standardization Committee tried to meet. One of the more difficult items on its agenda was the standardization of a test for syphilis, demanded by a variety of different national and international bodies. This article presents a study of the interaction between political, medical, and technical factors in the standardization of syphilis tests. It discusses the pressures under which the Committee worked, the technical problems of immunological theory and competing types of test, and the attempt to live up to a creative and aesthetic ideal of independent science.

Keywords: syphilis, League of Nations, Wassermann test, Kahn test, independent science


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