Opening the first chapter in the history of chemotherapy

EHRLICH, Paul & HATA, Sahachiro.

Die Experimentelle Chemotherapie der Spirillosen.

Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1910.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. Item #001886

8vo (234x157 mm). viii, 164 pp. 5 halftone plates, 4 pp. of publishers ads, 3 folding printed tables, text diagrams. Original green cloth gilt (very light wear), dark-green endpapers. Very good copy. ----

PMM 402; Dibner 136; Garrison-Morton 2403; Grolier Medicine 92; Heirs of Hippocrates 2159; Osler 1697; Waller 2707; Norman 686. - FIRST EDITION, OF THE FIRST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF CHEMOTHERAPY. Ehrlich had the idea of a "magic bullet" drug -- one that could seek out and attack invading organisms but not affect the host tissue -- after performing experiments with dyes in which bacteria had absorbed a stain while the surrounding micro-organism had not. Ehrlich and his assistant Hata performed 605 experiments with arsenical compounds on the spirochaeta pallida, the organism causing syphilis, which Fritz Schaudinn had identified in 1905, before they succeeded using a compound that they named "Salvarsan 606." "This was the first chapter in the history of chemotherapy, later stages being marked by the discovery of prontosil and the brilliantly successful sulpha drugs, including the well-known 'M. & B. 693' which was to save the life of Winston Churchill at a critical point in the Second World War" (PMM).

Sold