8 - The Chemotherapy of Bacterial Disease

Abstract

This chapter discusses the developments in the field of the chemotherapy of bacterial disease. Scientifically based chemotherapy was invented by Paul Ehrlich and may be said to have resulted from the imaginative application of his interest in the chemistry of living organisms that first clearly showed itself while he was still a medical student. Ehrlich and his remaining chemist, Bertheim, were able to prove that their concept of the structure of atoxyl was correct, and they set about producing a great range of variations of the atoxyl molecule that were, then, tested for their curative effects in mice and rats infected with trypanosomes, It was this particular idea that Ehrlich regarded as his most original contribution to practical chemotherapy and that led directly to an effective treatment for the human trepanematoses. The 418th compound tested, arsenophenylglycin, was very effective; however, the 606th, later to be so famous as the cure for syphilis, was not regarded as promising and put aside. Some progress was made in the 1920s in the chemotherapy of leprosy although it was hardly chemotherapy in Ehrlich's sense of the word. It was, in fact, the exploitation and improvement of a native remedy analogous to the use of quinine in malaria.