Charles Robert Richet French physiologist and immunologist, Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine (1913) Date of Birth: 26.08.1850 Country: France

Biography of Charles Robert Richet

Charles Robert Richet was a French physiologist and immunologist, born in the family of Alfred Richet, a professor of clinical surgery at the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris, and Eugenie Richet (Ruhr). Born in Paris, Richet decided to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career in medicine after completing his primary and secondary education. However, he soon realized that he was more interested in research work rather than practical medicine. He enrolled at the University of Paris, but his interests also extended to humanities subjects, which he remained interested in throughout his life. As a medical student, Richet studied hypnosis, digestive secrets, and the influence of pain on muscle and nerve activity.

In 1877, Richet received his medical degree, and the following year, he defended his doctoral dissertation, which demonstrated the presence of hydrochloric acid in the stomach secretions of mammals, birds, and invertebrates for the first time. Additionally, he discovered that one of the forms of lactic acid is present during digestion in the stomach. In the same year, he became a professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris and began studying various types of muscle contraction.

In 1883, Richet investigated the mechanisms of maintaining a constant body temperature in warm-blooded animals, particularly focusing on mucous membrane evaporation and muscle tremors. He found that the regulation of body temperature is controlled by specific areas of the brain and that heat dissipation in animals depends on their body size (larger animals have less heat dissipation per unit of mass). He also had an interest in microbiology, especially the presence of bacteria in the body's liquid environments. This topic became one of his research areas in the field of digestion.

In 1880, Louis Pasteur announced the discovery of a method to protect chicks from bird cholera. While attending an experiment where Pasteur introduced weakened cholera microbes to the chicks, Richet became interested in the idea that diseases caused by microbes might be related to the production of toxins, which could be counteracted by chemical substances in the blood. The following year, he proposed that French sheep susceptible to anthrax could be protected from the disease by transfusing them with blood from Algerian sheep resistant to it. However, Richet was only able to test this hypothesis in 1888 when he began to study the properties of blood from infected animals more thoroughly.

Working with Jules Héricourt, Richet discovered the Staphylococcus bacteria, which caused fatal disease in rabbits but only limited abscesses in dogs infected with the same bacteria. Direct blood transfusions from dogs to rabbits in an attempt to transfer resistance to the bacteria had a toxic effect. However, when dog blood was transfused into the abdominal cavity of rabbits, from which the blood was slowly absorbed, the transfer of resistance was successful and the rabbits acquired immunity to subsequent Staphylococcus infections. Richet and Héricourt then decided to apply their "hemotherapy" (later known as serum therapy) to human diseases, starting with tuberculosis. As Richet later admitted, this was an unsuccessful choice: "Serum therapy for tuberculosis is dubious, while in the case of diphtheria, it produces wonderful results, as Emil von Behring demonstrated two years later in his excellent work." For 10 years, Richet and his colleague unsuccessfully tried to develop serum therapy for tuberculosis.

In the 1890s, Richet participated in various research projects unrelated to physiology, including an unsuccessful attempt to build an airplane. By the end of the decade, Richet and Héricourt had to admit that their initial goal of serum therapy for tuberculosis had not been achieved. However, they discovered that feeding raw meat improved the condition of tuberculosis patients. In 1900, Richet proved that "zymsotherapy" (feeding raw meat juice) could be an effective treatment for tuberculosis in humans. In 1901, while studying the toxic effects of direct injection of muscle tissue into veins, he had the opportunity to enhance his knowledge of toxicology. During a scientific expedition in the Mediterranean Sea with Prince Albert of Monaco, he was tasked with studying the poisonous tentacles of the Portuguese man o' war. After some preliminary experiments, Richet returned to France, where he began a comparative study of the venom of sea anemones. He injected dogs with varying concentrations of the venom to determine the toxic dose. If the dogs survived, they were re-injected with the venom after a few weeks. And, as Richet wrote, "a stunning fact suddenly emerged, which I myself found hard to believe." When dogs were re-injected with much smaller doses of venom, they quickly died. Richet named this phenomenon anaphylaxis because it was the opposite of the preventative effect of conventional immunization.

Anaphylaxis has significant importance in medicine. For example, the antidiphtheria serum developed by Emil von Behring did not always have the desired effect: some patients developed a violent reaction to it, even leading to death. According to Richet's findings, they died from anaphylactic shock - an excessive allergic reaction to foreign proteins or antigens. Individuals with heightened sensitivity can experience anaphylaxis from horse serum used for immunization against tetanus toxin, as well as bee stings or the administration of penicillin. Regardless of the nature of the antigen, some common symptoms of anaphylaxis include vomiting, itching, decreased blood pressure, loss of consciousness, difficulty breathing, decreased temperature, and even death. In the 1900s, Richet and other scientists conducted numerous studies to understand anaphylaxis. In 1911, Richet summarized his work in the monograph "Anaphylaxis." He explained the phenomenon as "the presence of a substance in the blood that is harmless by itself but becomes a powerful poison when combined with an antigen." By showing that such substances are proteins, Richet developed specific diagnostic tests to detect hypersensitivity reactions.

In 1913, Richet was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of his work on anaphylaxis." In his Nobel lecture, Richet stated that while anaphylaxis is "a misfortune for the individual, it is necessary for the species, often at the expense of individual organisms... [as] anaphylaxis protects the species from interbreeding." This maintains the individuality of each species. Thanks to Richet's work, doctors not only understood the value of prevention but also became aware of its flip side. During World War I, Richet studied complications in blood transfusions. In 1877, Richet married Amelie Obri, and they had two daughters and two sons (one of whom also became a professor of medicine at the University of Paris, following in Richet's footsteps, and his grandson also pursued the same career path). Richet was a multi-talented individual with diverse interests: he was a physiologist, bacteriologist, pathologist, psychologist, statistician, engineer, poet, playwright, and writer. He studied the human psyche and published his experiments in the field in his book "Thirty Years of Psychical Research," which was translated into English in 1923. As a convinced pacifist, Richet wrote several books describing the horrors of war. Richet passed away in Paris on December 4, 1935.

Richet was elected to the French Academy of Sciences and became a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1926. He was also one of the publishers of the "Journal de Physiologic et Pathologie Generale" for 17 years and the editor of the "Revue Scientifique" for 24 years.