Ehrlich

ERLICH Paul (Paul Erlich, 1854-1915), famous German bacteriologist and biochemist; born into a Jewish family, first studied at the University of Breslau, then at Strasbourg, where he was a student of Waldeyer. Passed state examinations in 1877 in Breslau, then worked in Berlin at the Institute for Infectious Diseases under the direction of Cohnheim, Heidenhain and Weigert. In 1878 he was senior physician at the 1st Medical Clinic of Professor Frerichs in Berlin. In 1887 he received the title of associate professor at the University of Berlin. In 1890 he received a position at the Koch Institute in Berlin and the title of extraordinary professor at the University of Berlin. Ehrlich soon founded the Serum Control Station at the Koch Institute. In 1896 in Steglitz, near Berlin, the Institute for the Study of Sera (Institut fur Serumprufung und Serumforschung) was founded, of which E. was appointed director. In 1899 E. moved to work in Frankfurt am Main at the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy, where he remained until the end of his life. In 1908, E. together with Mechnikov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The scientific and practical legacy of E. is enormous. His works concerned almost all areas of biochemistry, experimental pathology and pharmacy. E. can be considered the founder of modern scientific chemotherapy. In the first period of his work, E. studied questions of constitution, distribution in the body and action of chemical substances. His works in this field coincided with the development of the then nascent aniline industry and gave a huge impetus to the use of aniline substances in therapy. E. established the susceptibility of certain body tissues to certain dyes and chemical substances and laid the foundation for the differential staining of cells and body tissues. At the same time and thanks to his discoveries in this field, E. studied the morphological composition of blood and discovered a special type of leukocytes, which he named Mastzellen. He carried out the classification of blood cells according to their affinity for certain dyes. During this same period of activity, E. discovered the diazo reaction in urine in infectious diseases and proposed the staining of living nervous tissue with methylene blue ("Das Sauerstoffbedurfniss des Organismus"). In the second period of his activity, E. began work on immunity and antitoxins. Under the strong influence of R. Koch, E. became fascinated by the special etiology of typhoid diseases. He put forward the toxic role of proteins and showed that the body can be immunized not only against bacteria but also against substances of non-bacterial origin, and that the degree of immunity can be measured. At the same time E. carried out practical and theoretical work on increasing the antitoxic power of antidiphtheritic serum. These works gave the scientific and practical basis for the vaccine therapy proposed by Wright. E. studied the composition of toxins and antitoxins, the action of poison and the binding of antitoxin in the body, revealing the protective role of antibodies. He formulated the concept of antibodies as a specific grouping of atoms that chemically bind poisons and toxins, and expressed the famous "side chain" theory expressing this connection. These works were published in the book "Das Sauerstoffbedurfniss". According to E., antitoxins and antibacterial antibodies are only special cases of the application of the natural law of the body's reaction to foreign bodies. In the third period of his activity, E. devoted himself to the study of hemolysins, put forward the theory of the ambceptor, connecting it with the theory of the receptor and side chains. In 1902 he began work on malignant tumors, and then on chemotherapy. First, he achieved sterilization of animals infected with trypanosomiasis by means of trypanrot , to which E. gradually began to add antimony, phosphorus, arsenic. These works gradually led him to the discovery of the role of arsenobenzols as antispironemal substances, and in 1910 he discovered a drug for the treatment of syphilis, which he named salvarsan or 606 (before its discovery E. had studied 605 different forms of arsenobenzols, which is why salvarsan was named 606). At this time begins the 4th and last period of E.'s scientific activity, devoted mainly to chemotherapy. It can be said that there is no area of medicine, bacteriology, serology and biological chemistry in which E. did not make the greatest scientific discoveries of enormous practical importance, and in the history of medicine he entered as one of the greatest creators of modern scientific therapy, hematology, histology and bacteriology. In 1934-35 the name of E. in Hitler's Germany was everywhere posthumously erased from the lists of German scientists as a "non-Aryan", and the Congress of the People's Health Society (a fascist organization with about 12 million members and headed by the notorious Julius Streicher) declared that E., Koch and other German scientists of "non-Aryan origin" poisoned the "Aryan blood" with their injections and sera. But E. did not live to see the fall of culture in Germany, and his name remained in history as the name of one of the founders of modern biology and medicine. Main works of E.: "Das Sauerstoffbedurfniss des Organismus" (B., 1885); "Farbenanalytische Untersuchimgen zur Histologie und Klinik des Brutes" (B., 1891); "Die Anaemie" (together with A. Lazarus, Wien, 1898-1900); "Beitrage zur experimentellen Pathologie und Chemotherapie" (Lpz., 1909); "Aus Theorie und Praxis der Chemotherapie" (Lpz., 1911); "Grundlagen und Erfolge der Chemotherapie" (Stuttgart, 1911); "Die experimentelle Chemotherapie der Spirillosen" (together with Hata, B., 1910).