Man Behind the Test

The ancient Hebrews decreed that a warning blast should be sounded on the shofar to mark the third case of an infectious disease in a community, but diphtheria rated a shofar warning for the very first case. Few diseases have been so dreaded as diphtheria, partly because it is especially deadly for children in the tender two-to-five age bracket. Last week Yeshiva University in New York City held a special convocation to give an honorary degree to a physician who had done much to take the dread out of diphtheria: Bela Schick, the little-known man behind the famous Schick test.

When Bela Schick was still a boy in Hungary, German researchers tracked down the microbe which causes diphtheria, and isolated the poisonous secretion which makes a strange, strangling membrane grow across many a victim's throat. They got as far as developing a horse serum which could be used either as a preventive against the disease or as a remedy after it had struck. But so many people got sick from the serum itself that doctors hated to give it as a preventive unless they could be sure that it was really necessary. They needed a test to show whether a patient had acquired immunity to diphtheria.

As a young doctor in Vienna, Schick worked with Clemens von Pirquet on serum sickness and similar sensitivities. The two coined the word "allergy." Von Pirquet hit upon the tuberculin test, which shows whether the subject has (or has ever had) tuberculosis, and Schick thought the same idea might be applied to other diseases. What he got was slightly different but more valuable: a remarkably accurate and fairly simple test which shows whether a subject is vulnerable to diphtheria.

Schick announced the test in 1913 Within ten years, a new and far safer immunizing substance (toxoid) took most of the risk out of preventive measures. Nowadays, throughout most of the U.S. and in many another country, babies get their first protective shot by the time they are a year old. Years after the first shot, the Schick test (two injections, one in each arm) shows whether the immunity has lasted or needs renewing. And it will show at any time whether a preventive shot has "taken."

Although the Schick test was intended mainly for children, its usefulness extends to their elders. For adults are more likely than youngsters to have allergic reactions to immunization shots, so it is especially important in their case to give no unnecessary innoculations. Sensitive grown-ups often can be immunized by tiny, repeated doses of toxoid.

Slight, gentle Pediatrician Schick, 75, childless himself, has treated tens of thousands of children in Vienna and (since 1923) in New York City, still commutes by subway from his Manhattan home for office hours in Brooklyn. More than the medals he has received he treasures a thank-you book signed in 1933 by a million New York City schoolchildren. Yeshiva's new million-dollar department of pediatrics is to be named for Dr. Schick. His most enduring monument: the test which helps to save lives.

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