Evaluation of whole-genome enrichment and sequencing of from FFPE samples after 75 years.

The recent developments in genomic sequencing have permitted the publication of many new complete genome sequences of , the bacterium responsible for syphilis, which has led to a new understanding of its phylogeny and diversity. However, few archived samples are available, because of the degradability of the bacterium and the difficulties in preservation. We present a complete genome obtained from a Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) organ sample from 1947, kept at the Strasbourg Faculty of Medicine.

Reshaping the diagnostic borders: Historical analysis of the diagnostic changes following the introduction of the schizophrenia concept.

Background: Although the concept of schizophrenia is still widely presented as having replaced that of dementia praecox, studies have shown that the former was broader than the latter, resulting in a more complex diagnostic redistribution. However, this is poorly documented by quantitative approaches.

Aims: We sought to test the hypothesis that the use of the concept of schizophrenia had caused a diagnostic redistribution and to quantify it.

"A word from man to man". Interwar Venereal Disease Education Films for Military Audiences in France.

In the 1910s, in the wake of the glorious decade of syphilography (1900-1910), the early health education films lay the groundwork for a pragmatic approach to the containment of venereal diseases combining (early) diagnosis, treatment and prophylaxis. Realizing that WWI was turning into a durable military conflict, the French Army created a Cinematographic Section (SCA) in 1915 for the purposes of war propaganda and documentation. In 1916, secretary of war Justin Godard declared syphilis a "national public danger" and initiated information campaigns in military and civilian spheres.

Packaging BCG: standardizing an anti-tuberculosis vaccine in interwar Europe.

Using the example of the anti-tuberculosis vaccine BCG during the 1920s and 1930s, this article asks how a labile laboratory-modified bacteria was transformed into a genuine standard vaccine packaged and commercialized as a pharmaceutical product. At the center of the analysis lies the notion of standardization inquiring why and how a local laboratory process with standard operating procedures (SOPs) reached its limits and was transformed when the product faced international distribution. Moving from Paul Ehrlich's initial technological notion of Wertbestimmung referring to a practice physiologically testing the effects of ill-defined antitoxins, the concept of standardization is extended to pharmaceutical and economical meanings implying quality control for biological therapeutic agents produced by a variety of industrial entrepreneurs.

The 'experimental stable' of the BCG vaccine: safety, efficacy, proof, and standards, 1921-1933.

The anti-tuberculosis BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine was conceived and developed between 1905 and 1921 at Pasteur Institutes in France. Between 1921 and A. Calmette's death in 1933, the vaccine went through a first period of national and international production and distribution for its use in humans.

Experimental rage: the development of medical ethics and the genesis of scientific facts. Ludwik Fleck: an answer to the crisis of modern medicine in interwar Germany?

In 1930, the large-scale introduction of the BCG vaccination in the city of Lübeck in northern Germany led to a major scandal that focused public attention on medical experimentation with human beings as well as reviving criticism of the medical profession that had been voiced before. The trial following the catastrophe raised the first clearly identifiable public discussions on medical ethics in Europe, and led to the establishment of the first regulations for medical research on human beings in the western hemisphere; the German 'Richtlinien' of 1931. In 1935, Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) published a now classic monograph entitled Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.