Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Major Medical Breakthroughs in the Twentieth Century Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Morton A. Meyers
microbe and then be the source of its undoing.
Two young laboratory assistants at Ehrlich's institute injected themselves with the yellow crystalline powder dissolved in water to find out the right doses and test the toleration of 606. The preparation proved successful. Its chemical makeup directed the arsenic poison to the spirochete rather than to the patient. When 606 (generic name arsphenamine) was licensed to Farbwerke Hoechst near Frankfurt in acontract with Georg-Speyer-Haus, it was marketed under the proprietary name Salvarsan—an arsenical salvation. Ehrlich chose not to make the contract with himself. He asked for only a modest interest in it, which was laid down in an agreement with the company.
The drug was eagerly sought by both physicians and patients, and large clinical trials in patients with syphilis were promptly undertaken. About 65,000 doses were provided free by Speyer-Haus from June to December 1910, until Hoechst Chemical Works could produce vast commercial quantities. The press throughout the world trumpeted the success of the treatments. A more easily used form, named Neosalvarsan, was soon brought to market. But even here, the intensity of the effort is evident in that Neosalvarsan was compound no. 914, more than three hundred compounds after 606.
Ehrlich found a great source of happiness in the first postcard he received from a cured patient. He kept this always in his wallet in the breast pocket of his coat.
Sometime after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, freed from patent protection, British and French scientists began collaborating to synthesize the drug, and 94,762 injections were administered by the French Military Medical Services alone. While some might find the title of Fracastoro's poem of 1530, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus ( Syphilis, or the French Disease ) vindicated, this large figure provides an index of the widespread extent of venereal disease at the time. Neosalvarsan remained the only serious treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in the 1940s.
Nazi Gratitude
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they confiscated all books about Ehrlich and burned them in an attempt to expunge his name from German history. In 1938 his widow and family fled to the United States.
After Salvarsan was discovered, there was widespread hope that other chemical “salvations” would be rapidly uncovered. Optimismran high that an arsenal of “magic bullets” could be directed against man's ills. In 1913 Ehrlich enthused, “In the next five years we shall have advances of the highest importance to record in this field of research.” But this was not to be the case. Many compounds, including some new synthetic dyes, were tried by many researchers against the common bacterial diseases. Over and over, each failed. Dashed hopes and pessimism reigned over the next two decades.
Toward the end of his career, Ehrlich took stock of his experiences. He had earlier prophesied, “It will be a caprice of chance, or fortune, or of intuition which decides which investigator gets into his hands the substances which turn out to be the very best materials for fighting the disease, or the basal substances for the discovery of such.” 8 And, in fact, it was a “caprice of chance or fortune” that yielded the next triumph of the new art of chemotherapy, the sulfonamides—not five but twenty-five years later.
4
The Art of Dyeing
By the time World War I began, Germany's chemical industry had achieved world leadership. It had evolved in a series of steps begun in the 1880s that led from synthetic dyestuffs through pharmaceuticals to “chemotherapy.” The synthetic dye industry had originated with a stunning circumstance of serendipity in 1856 by an eighteen-year-old chemist, William Henry Perkin, trained at the Royal College of Chemistry in England.
Using a tiny laboratory that he had set up in his home, Perkin tried to synthesize the antimalarial drug quinine. The British Empire and other
Two young laboratory assistants at Ehrlich's institute injected themselves with the yellow crystalline powder dissolved in water to find out the right doses and test the toleration of 606. The preparation proved successful. Its chemical makeup directed the arsenic poison to the spirochete rather than to the patient. When 606 (generic name arsphenamine) was licensed to Farbwerke Hoechst near Frankfurt in acontract with Georg-Speyer-Haus, it was marketed under the proprietary name Salvarsan—an arsenical salvation. Ehrlich chose not to make the contract with himself. He asked for only a modest interest in it, which was laid down in an agreement with the company.
The drug was eagerly sought by both physicians and patients, and large clinical trials in patients with syphilis were promptly undertaken. About 65,000 doses were provided free by Speyer-Haus from June to December 1910, until Hoechst Chemical Works could produce vast commercial quantities. The press throughout the world trumpeted the success of the treatments. A more easily used form, named Neosalvarsan, was soon brought to market. But even here, the intensity of the effort is evident in that Neosalvarsan was compound no. 914, more than three hundred compounds after 606.
Ehrlich found a great source of happiness in the first postcard he received from a cured patient. He kept this always in his wallet in the breast pocket of his coat.
Sometime after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, freed from patent protection, British and French scientists began collaborating to synthesize the drug, and 94,762 injections were administered by the French Military Medical Services alone. While some might find the title of Fracastoro's poem of 1530, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus ( Syphilis, or the French Disease ) vindicated, this large figure provides an index of the widespread extent of venereal disease at the time. Neosalvarsan remained the only serious treatment for syphilis until the advent of penicillin in the 1940s.
Nazi Gratitude
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they confiscated all books about Ehrlich and burned them in an attempt to expunge his name from German history. In 1938 his widow and family fled to the United States.
After Salvarsan was discovered, there was widespread hope that other chemical “salvations” would be rapidly uncovered. Optimismran high that an arsenal of “magic bullets” could be directed against man's ills. In 1913 Ehrlich enthused, “In the next five years we shall have advances of the highest importance to record in this field of research.” But this was not to be the case. Many compounds, including some new synthetic dyes, were tried by many researchers against the common bacterial diseases. Over and over, each failed. Dashed hopes and pessimism reigned over the next two decades.
Toward the end of his career, Ehrlich took stock of his experiences. He had earlier prophesied, “It will be a caprice of chance, or fortune, or of intuition which decides which investigator gets into his hands the substances which turn out to be the very best materials for fighting the disease, or the basal substances for the discovery of such.” 8 And, in fact, it was a “caprice of chance or fortune” that yielded the next triumph of the new art of chemotherapy, the sulfonamides—not five but twenty-five years later.
4
The Art of Dyeing
By the time World War I began, Germany's chemical industry had achieved world leadership. It had evolved in a series of steps begun in the 1880s that led from synthetic dyestuffs through pharmaceuticals to “chemotherapy.” The synthetic dye industry had originated with a stunning circumstance of serendipity in 1856 by an eighteen-year-old chemist, William Henry Perkin, trained at the Royal College of Chemistry in England.
Using a tiny laboratory that he had set up in his home, Perkin tried to synthesize the antimalarial drug quinine. The British Empire and other
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