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German physician, bacteriologist, and chemist (1854–1915)

Born in Strehlen (now Strzelin in Poland), Ehrlich studied medicine at the universities of Breslau, Strasbourg, and Freiburg, gaining a physician's degree at Breslau in 1878. For the next nine years he worked at the Charité Hospital, Berlin, on many topics including typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and pernicious anemia. He was awarded the title of professor by the Prussian Ministry of Education in 1884 for his impressive work in these fields. In 1887 he became a teacher at the University of Berlin but was not paid because of the antisemitic feeling at the time – Ehrlich would not renounce his Jewish upbringing. As a result of his laboratory work he contracted tuberculosis and was not restored to health until 1890, when he set up his own small research laboratory at Steglitz on the outskirts of Berlin.

In 1890 Robert Koch announced the discovery of tuberculin and suggested its use in preventing and curing tuberculosis. He asked Ehrlich to work on it with him at the Moabit Hospital in Berlin. Ehrlich accepted and for six years studied TB and cholera. In 1896 he accepted the post of director of the new Institute for Serum Research and Serum Investigation at Steglitz and in 1899 moved to the Institute of Experimental Therapy in Frankfurt. Here he investigated African sleeping sickness and syphilis along with his other studies. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on immunity and serum therapy.

Two years later he announced his most famous discovery, Salvarsan – a synthetic chemical that was effective against syphilis – and until the end of his life he worked on the problems associated with the treatment of patients using this compound of arsenic.

Ehrlich is considered to be the founder of modern chemotherapy because he developed systematic scientific techniques to search for new synthetic chemicals that could specifically attack disease-causing microorganisms. Ehrlich sought for these ‘magic bullets’ by carefully altering the chemical structure of dye molecules that selectively stained the microorganisms observable in his microscope but did not stain cells in the host. He was persevering and optimistic – Salvarsan (compound number 606) was not ‘rediscovered’ until almost 1000 compounds had been synthesized and tried. He made and tested about 3000 compounds based on the structure of Salvarsan in an attempt to make a drug that was bacteriocidal to streptococci.

Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915), a German chemist, was a pioneer in the field of applied organic chemistry. He worked initially on dyestuffs and staining methods for microscopic study of bacteria; and then, beginning in 1891, at the Koch Institute in Berlin, on the search for drugs that would be effective against some of the bacteria that had by then been identified as the specific causes of many diseases. Ehrlich's early work on antitoxins evolved into a systematic examination of many candidate chemicals that might be effective against Treponema pallidum, the spirochaete responsible for syphilis. At that time, syphilis was a common disease and a serious public health problem. This work was based on the observation that many chemicals exhibited selective affinity for specific organisms and tissues. In 1909, in collaboration with Sakahiro Hata, a Japanese colleague at the Koch Institute, he developed Salvarsan, an arsenical that killed the spirochaete without killing the patient—although it did have some toxic side effects. Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1908.

(SEE ALSO: Syphilis)

— JOHN M. LAST

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The German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) advanced the science and practice of medicine by applying the fast-growing achievements of organic chemistry to the problems of disease. He is known for his discovery of Salvarsan.

Paul Ehrlich was born on March 14, 1854, at Strehlen, Upper Silesia. While still at school he took a great interest in chemical experiments and even got the local druggist to compound throat lozenges according to his original prescription.

Preparatory Work

At first Ehrlich attended Breslau University but found it dull and uninteresting because it lacked biology and organic chemistry, his favorite subjects. Accordingly, he passed on to the new University of Strasbourg, where he experimented with histological staining, but he returned to Breslau in his third term. In 1878 he graduated in medicine at Leipzig. His thesis was a contribution on the theory and practice of histological staining - the conception of the processes in their chemical, technological, and histological aspects - in which his idea of a chemical binding of heterogeneous substances to protoplasm was first expressed. Already in 1876, he had discovered the "mast" cell by its basophilic granules.

Early in his student career Ehrlich started investigations which in spite of their apparent diversity converged on a common principle: the action of drugs as a manifestation of their specific affinity for particular constituents of cells. According to Ehrlich, substances which affect bodily functions do so by virtue of combining with particular components of the animal. In chemical idiom, certain atom groups (side chains) of the drug combine with receptor atom groups of the cellular protoplasm and lead to the action. This was his famous "side-chain theory."

Ehrlich spent several years in Egypt recovering from a severe case of phthisis. On his return to Germany, Robert Koch, from whom Ehrlich had received an understanding of the modern discipline of cellular pathology and also the relation of bacteriology to disease processes, offered him a place in his new Institute for Infectious Diseases. Here Ehrlich perfected methods of preparing and standardizing diphtheria antitoxin from horses. Meanwhile he was appointed director of the State Institute for Serum Research and Serum Control at Steglitz near Berlin. Work on tumors and immunological studies occupied the forefront of his research until about 1909. In 1908 Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize in medicine for his studies on immunity.

Science of Chemotherapy

The Speyer-Ellissen family of Frankfurt offered to endow a research institute for Ehrlich's work on chemo-therapy. The institute, named George Speyer-Haus, was built, and in 1906 Ehrlich became director. The methods of chemotherapy, that is, treating infections with synthetic compounds antagonistic to pathogenic agents without seriously damaging the host, had arisen in 1891, when it was observed that methylene blue exercises a curative action on human malaria. Before the founding of the institute, Ehrlich had conducted work on an experimental scale with a small staff, and this resulted in a veritable miracle: the cure of a trypanosome infection that was invariably fatal in mice in 3 - 4 days. Cure followed one subcutaneous injection of a synthetic dye, trypan red, administered within 24 hours of the anticipated time of death. Other drugs were found to possess a degree of therapeutic effect, and certain organic arsenical compounds, "atoxyl" derivatives, also proved to be trypanocidal. From these the drug Salvarsan was derived, which Ehrlich found to be the most efficient curative agent for human syphilis then known, although it was sometimes liable to produce toxic effects. The science of chemotherapy was thus born.

Ehrlich's tremendous achievements were the outcome of a life of unremitting scientific preoccupation to which almost everything was sacrificed. The furor of Salvarsan made him one of the celebrities of his time, both in science and commerce. He died in Bad Homburg, Hesse, on Aug. 20, 1915.

Further Reading

For Ehrlich's own writings see F. Himmelweit, ed., The Collected Papers of Paul Ehrlich (1956). Accounts of Ehrlich's life and work are Herman Goodman, Paul Ehrlich: A Man of Genius and an Inspiration to Humanitarians (1924), and Martha Marquardt, Paul Ehrlich (1951). A sketch of his life is in Theodore L. Sourkes, Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology, 1901-1965 (1953; rev. ed. 1966).

For more information on Paul Ehrlich, visit Britannica.com.

(poul ār'lĭkh) , 1854–1915, German bacteriologist. He directed (1896) an institute for serum research at Steglitz, near Berlin, that was transferred (1899) to Frankfurt-am-Main as the Institute for Experimental Therapy. For his work in immunology he shared with Élie Metchnikoff the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He made valuable contributions also in hematology, in cellular pathology, in the use of dyes in microscopy and in the treatment of disease, in the study of cancer, and in his discovery of salvarsan (or “606,” so called from its numerical order in his experimental series) and of neosalvarsan (less toxic than salvarsan) for the treatment of syphilis.

Quotes:

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."

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