Dr. Cara McDonald

Is there a famous case?

Well, yes, there was a famous case where a lot of people died from infected sausage back in Germany, I think it was, in the early 1900s.

And then during the World Wars, they...

identified this bacteria and the toxins and thought that perhaps this could be used in warfare as a biological weapon.

So that's why they isolated the toxin and purified it to use in warfare.

But what they realised is you need to keep it in the fridge.

That doesn't work very well.

No, we just stick it in our face.

Yeah, it's really fascinating actually.

From there, from warfare, the military biologist who was working with it started to think that perhaps it could be used for medical uses and he was the one that really purified it and worked out how to manufacture it.

And then there was an ophthalmologist called Alan Scott who in the 1970s was the first person who started to think maybe this could be used for some facial muscle spasms

particularly around the eye.

And so it went from there to being used for ocular spasm.

And then it was a sort of coincidence that the ophthalmologist started to realize that the patients wanted it because of their wrinkles, right?

So this was what year?

The 70s?

70s.

Yeah, it was late 70s.

So late 80s was when it was very first used for a cosmetic use.

It wasn't until 2002 it was approved for cosmetic use.