First Came Blood Sausage, Then Botulism, and Then Botox

What we know today as Botox was lightning in a bottle until it became a docile servant of humankind thanks to Alan Scott who launched his career in medicine with the words, “I wanted to ask questions and find some answers.” But the convoluted story of Botox starts earlier in southern Germany in the late seventeen hundreds.

Botox is produced from living matter, meaning it is a biologic which is a naturally occurring substance. Evidence reveals it has existed from the beginning of time as a toxin secreted by the ubiquitous bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Death by poisoning with this toxin was causing epidemics resulting in death in local European populations at a time when their transplanted counterparts were overseas establishing the path for what would become the United States of America. This deadly disease present in Germany was linked to a food. Only those who consumed it were affected while those who did not were spared. The food was blood sausage, and the fatal disease became known as sausage poisoning.

A polymath district health officer acting like a sleuth in 1817 during a recurring epidemic found a fatty substance that was the only common feature in these sausages and selected this substance for study. In his lab he fed it to tiny creatures and all succumbed. When it was inserted in the muscle of a larger specimen, the muscle was weakened but the subjects survived. More curious than cautious, Justinus Kerner then put a drop of fatty poison on his tongue. It caused a tight feeling and dryness of his mouth. This led the intrepid healer to predict the fatty substance could find a use someday as a medicine. How right he was. But it took 150 years and Alan Scott to prove it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.