Standardization Before Biomedicine: On Early Forms of Regulatory Objectivity

Abstract

Some time ago, I was invited to comment on a set of papers, now collected in this volume, to be presented at a Heidelberg meeting on the history of the standardization of therapeutic agents from 1890 to 1950. I must confess that I was somewhat puzzled and surprised by this invitation for, in spite of some forays into the visual history of early twentieth-century immunology, most of my research centers on the post-1950s period and has a sociological flavor. As some of my historian colleagues would certainly argue, I therefore was (and still am) doubly unqualified to discuss historical accounts of Wertbestimmung, first because of my association with sociology and, second, because of my contemporary focus. But this, of course, also provided me with a greater degree of speculative latitude: an outsider’s freedom, so to speak.