The Dawn of Immunology: The Era of Paul Ehrlich

Abstract

In an eventful period in which German medicine was just turning away from Romanticism and Natural Philosophy and when the scientific way of thinking and experimentation was making strong progress, Paul Ehrlich was born on 14th March 1854 in Strehlen, near Breslau in Silesia. Only one day later, Emil Behring was born in Hausdorf, East Prussia. A few years before Ehrlich’s birth, a severe typhoid epidemic had struck the region of Upper Silesia, and the Prussian government sent the young pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) from Berlin to the province to carry out an inspection; this resulted in his famous propositions for governmental help [1]. A few years later, the same Virchow, then Professor in Wurzburg, developed his fundamental ideas on cellular pathology, in which he postulated that all manifestations of disease could be reduced to disturbances in living cells. He also expressed his now well-known principle that “All cells originate from other cells”.