Pox_ An American History - Michael Willrich [107]
In 1894, the Mulford Company entered the biologics market at its cutting edge, racing to become the first U.S. firm to produce diphtheria antitoxin. Germany’s Koch Institute was already preparing the lifesaving antitoxin, which like smallpox vaccine was an animal product. (A horse was inoculated with diphtheria toxin and given time to produce antibodies; later the horse was bled and the antibodies separated from the serum.) The New York City Health Department was developing its own antitoxin. To develop a commercial product, Mulford hired Dr. Joseph McFarland, a bacteriologist who had trained in Heidelberg and Vienna and who was at that time employed by both the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Board of Health. In a display of the public-private cooperation that drove biologics innovation in the 1890s, the New York City Health Department bacteriologist, Dr. William Park, provided McFarland with the cultures necessary to start his laboratory in a West Philadelphia stable. The University of Pennsylvania’s new Laboratory of Hygiene agreed to test lots of McFarland’s antitoxin. By 1895, Mulford had placed America’s first commercial diphtheria antitoxin on the market. The following year, the company moved its biologics department to newly constructed stables and laboratories in rural Glenolden, eight miles outside Philadelphia. In 1898, the company hired Dr. W. F. Elgin from the National Vaccine Establishment and put him to work making glycerinated vaccine. By 1902, Mulford’s annual sales topped $1 million.50
Mulford benefited from all of the innovations that had taken place since Martin brought bovine virus to America in 1870. According to Mulford marketing details, the company’s stables and laboratories were state-of-the-art operations modeled after “the leading vaccine establishments in Europe and America.” The company used suckling female calves, just four to eight weeks old, tested for tuberculosis. “The animals are kept at all times under the most rigid sanitary surroundings in buildings all the materials of which—stone, cement, metal, slate, and porcelain-finish—permit of immediate and thorough disinfection.” The calves were fed sterilized milk, their excretions “disinfected and removed as soon as voided.” The inoculations and collection of the virus took place in a special operating room set apart from the stables.51
Dr. Elgin detailed his procedures in a presentation, complete with lantern slides, to the 1900 meeting of the Conference of State and Provincial Boards of Health of North America. After having its underside shaved, the calf was strapped to an operating table where “the operator,” clad in a sterilized gown and wielding an aseptic scalpel, made a series of linear incisions along its lower body. Glycerinated lymph (harvested from a previous calf) was slathered over the entire area and rubbed into the incisions. A worker removed the animal to the sanitary stable, returning the calf to the operating table six days later. Along the incisions had risen a line of vesicles covered with “a slight crust or scab.” Using sterilized water, the crust was softened and then removed, “leaving behind rows of pearly white vesicles,” which the operator scooped out (using a tool of the trade called “Volkman’s spoon”) and deposited in a sterilized box. This “pulp” was then placed on glass rollers in a grinding machine and mixed with glycerin. The mixture was stored in large stock tubes and placed in an icebox while the glycerin did its work. Finally, glycerinated lymph was placed in capillary tubes (each containing enough for a single vaccination), hermetically sealed, and prepared for shipping. Mulford followed the practice at the best firms of killing the calves immediately after the collection of vaccine and conducting a postmortem examination to ensure that the animal was in fact