Anaphylaxis In 1901, Albert I, Prince of Monaco organised a scientific expedition around the French coast of the Atlantic Ocean. He specifically invited Portier and Charles Richet, professor of
physiology at the
Collège de France, to join him for investigating the toxins produced by cnidarians (like
jellyfish and
sea anemones). Richet and Portier boarded Albert's ship
Princesse Alice II from where they collected various marine animals. Richet and Portier extracted a toxin called hypnotoxin from their collection of jellyfish (but the real source was later identified as
Portuguese man o' war) and sea anemone (
Actinia sulcata) from
Cape Verde Islands. In their first experiment on the ship, they injected a dog with the toxin in an attempt to immunise the dog, which instead developed a severe reaction (
hypersensitivity). To confirm the findings, they knew that more experimental works were needed in the laboratory. In 1902, Richet introduced the term
aphylaxis to describe the condition of lack of protection. He later changed the term to
anaphylaxis on grounds of
euphony. The term is from the
Greek ἀνά-,
ana-, meaning "against", and φύλαξις,
phylaxis, meaning "protection". On 15 February 1902, Richet and Portier jointly presented their findings before the
Société de biologie in Paris. The moment is regarded as the birth of
allergy (the term invented by
Clemens von Pirquet in 1906) study (
allergology). Portier never claimed the co-discovery of anaphylaxis, instead honoured Richet as a senior scientist. After the Nobel Prize, Richet praised him for "giving up all claim to the honor of the discovery." It was at the time a known fact that such bacteria were parasites. Portier began to realised that microbes could be necessary for the lives and formation of higher organisms. In 1917, he published the role of symbiosis in the lives of plants and animals, and by that time he started writing a book, he called
Les Symbiotes. In 1918, Portier, summing up his observations on symbiosis in nature and his evolutionary idea (now known as symbiogenesis), published
Les Symbiotes, dedicating it to Prince Albert.As Portier himself remarked that his theory was "a veritable scientific heresy," The next year,
Auguste Lumière published a refutation
Le Mythe des Symbiotes ("
The Myth of Symbiotes").) == Honours ==