Archives of the Infectious Disease Research Centre
From The Long Sepsis, an encyclopedia of a world that didn't happen
The Archives of the Infectious Disease Research Centre comprise the institutional records, laboratory notebooks, correspondence, and clinical trial data generated by the Centre since its founding in 1968. Housed at the Centre's main facility in Cambridge, the archives document the development of serum therapy as a systemic alternative to the limited azo drugs during a period when bacterial infection remained the central unsolved problem of medicine.
The collection consists of approximately 180 linear metres of manuscript material, along with microfilm copies of statistical tables and trial protocols. The earliest materials date to the Centre's establishment as a collaborative venture between the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council, undertaken in response to the inadequacy of existing azo drug treatments for conditions such as meningitis and endocarditis. The archives contain the working papers of the Centre's research teams, including laboratory records from immunization trials, animal husbandry protocols for the Centre's hyperimmunized donor herds, and the correspondence through which researchers coordinated with specialized serum farms across England and Scotland.
The clinical trial materials form the core of the collection. These include case notes, patient outcome records, and the statistical worksheets used by Paul Kaplan and his collaborators to develop survival analysis methods adapted to serum therapy measurement. Kaplan's own papers, which entered the archives in 1982, contain his working calculations for what became the Kaplan-Meier estimator, developed specifically to measure patient outcomes in trials where rapid cure was unavailable and follow-up measured survival in months or years rather than days. The trial records show the progressive refinement of serum dosing protocols, the documentation of donor serum antibody titres, and the methodological problems that arose in comparing outcomes across different patient populations and infection types.
The archives preserve the Centre's correspondence with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Institute for the History of Bacteriology in Berlin, and research groups in Japan working on what would become the Halloway-Umezaki method. These exchanges document the international coordination of serum therapy research in the 1970s, including technical discussions of immunization schedules, serum storage conditions, and the standardization of antibody measurement. A substantial subset of letters and memoranda concerns the Centre's work with the Geneva Sanitary Bureau to develop uniform protocols for serum therapy efficacy trials, undertaken during the 1974–1976 period when serum therapy was transitioning from experimental treatment to licensed clinical practice.
The administrative records include the Centre's founding charter, establishment correspondence with the Medical Research Council, and annual reports documenting the Centre's growth from its initial staff of twelve to a peak of forty-seven by 1979. Budget files record the costs of maintaining hyperimmunized animals, purchasing equipment for antibody measurement, and the substantial expenses of cold-chain maintenance required for serum storage and transport. Personnel records document the careers of the Centre's researchers, including the recruitment of specialists from pharmaceutical firms, teaching hospitals, and continental research institutions.
The archives contain the Centre's institutional response to the 1979 Bacillary Congress, the international conference held in Geneva to assess progress in serum therapy development and coordinate recommendations for integration into national health services. Internal memoranda from this period show the Centre's role in advocating for public funding of serum production and the establishment of the International Serum Registry, the coordinated database created to track serum therapy outcomes globally.
References
- 1.Annual Reports of the Infectious Disease Research Centre]], 1968–1982, Centre archives, Cambridge
- 2.The Development of Serum Therapy Trials: An Institutional History]], Paul Kaplan and Michael Rothstein, 1987, Cambridge University Press, pp. 156–189
- 3.Archives Catalogue: Infectious Disease Research Centre]], compiled by Elizabeth Hartwell, 1984, unpublished finding guide, British Library reference MS-IDRC-1984
- 4.Statistical Methods in Clinical Bacteriology and Their Application to Serum Therapy Trials]], Kaplan and colleagues, 1991, International Journal of Medical Statistics, 14(3), pp. 234–251
- 5.Correspondence of the Infectious Disease Research Centre with International Collaborators, 1973–1979]], Centre archives, Cambridge, MS-IDRC-CORR-INT