Paul Ehrlich and the Chemotherapy.
Paul Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata. On March 14, 1854, German Jewish physician Paul Ehrlich was born. Ehrlich made significant contributions in the fields of hematology immunology and chemotherapy. He invented the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria. The methods he developed for staining tissue made it possible to distinguish between different type of blood cells which led to the capability to diagnose numerous blood diseases. Paul Ehrlich became fascinated by the process of staining microscopic tissue substances during his time at the secondary school in Breslau. He studied medicine at the universities of Breslau, Strasbourg, Freiburg im Breisgau and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1882. Afterwards, he began working at Charité in Berlin as an assistant medical director under Theodor Frerichs the founder of experimental clinical medicine, focusing on histology, hematology and color chemistry. Ehrlich traveled to Egypt in the mid 1880s in order to find a cure for tuberculosis. He established a private medical practice and a laboratory in Berlin-Steglitz. In 1891, Paul Ehrlich received was asked by Robert Koch to join the staff at his Berlin Institute of Infectious Diseases. In 1896 a new institute was established for Ehrlich’s specialization, the Institute for Serum Research and Testing, whose director he became. Later on, Paul Ehrlich became the director of the Georg Speyer House in Frankfurt, a private research foundation affiliated with his institute. As his habilitation thesis, Ehrlich submitted. The Need of the Organism for Oxygen in 1885. In it, he introduced the new technology of in vivo staining. Through injecting the dyes alizarin blue and indophenol blue into laboratory animals, he found that after their death, various organs had been colored to different degrees. He then theorized that all life processes can be traced to processes of physical chemistry occurring in the cell. Further, Paul Ehrlich came to believe that methylene blue could be particularly suitable for staining bacteria. He believed that since the parasite family of Plasmodiidae can be stained with methylene blue, it could possibly be used in the treatment of malaria. After trating two patients in Berlin-Moabit successfully, Paul Ehrlich obtained methylene blue from the company Hoechst AG, which ended up in a long collaboration with this company. Paul Ehrlich continued his research on methylene blue and started looking for an agent which was as good as methylene blue but without its side effects. He thought there must be chemical pharmaceuticals which would have just as specific an effect on individual diseases and he wanted to find a "Therapia sterilisans magna", a treatment that could kill all disease pathogens. The scientist systematically tested chemical compounds and he discovered that for instance Arsenophenylglycine had a large therapeutic effect. In 1909, he also discovered a compound that combatted the causes of syphilis and had only little side effects. It was marketed as Salvarsan starting from 1910 which was a great success. It turned out to be the most effective drug for treating syphilis until penicillin became available. At yovisto you may learn more about. The wireless future of medicine in a lecture by Eric Topol.