Discovery of Antivenom

French veterinarian Cesaire Auguste Phisalix and chemist Gabriel Bertrand, and separately French physician Albert Calmette, announced in 1894 that an animal could be protected against snake venom by injecting it with serum taken from an animal already immunized against that venom, a discovery presented to the Societe de Biologie in Paris on February 10, 1894. Calmette, working at the Pasteur Institute, carried the discovery furthest toward practical use, immunizing horses with venom from the Indian cobra and producing a serum that became the first commercially available antivenom. The breakthrough translated the still-new theory of induced immunity into a working treatment for a form of poisoning that had previously been almost untreatable, and antivenom remains on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines today.