The work of Paul Ehrlich and his position in the history of medical research / [T.S. Work].

  • Work, T. S. (Thomas Spence)
Date:
1954
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The work of Paul Ehrlich and his position in the history of medical research / [T.S. Work]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    adding aniline water to basic dyes and thus laid the foundation for the universally applied Gram stain. Ehrlich'1 s interest in methylene blue also dates from this period. It led almost at once to the devel¬ opment of a practical method for staining the tubercle bacillus and ultimately to the development of synthetic antimalarials. Receptors Ehrlich's researches on stains had as their objective not so much the development of new histological methods, though these were supplied, as the throwing of light on the larger question of the com¬ bining affinities of the tissues and the intra vitam distribution of drugs. “Das Sauerstoffbediirfnis des Organismus published as a small book in 1885 contains an account of experiments designed to measure the affinity of tissues for oxygen. Two dyes were employed, alizarin blue and indophenol, both of which are reducible to leuco compounds, one more readily than the other. Each dye was intro¬ duced into the circulation of a living animal which was killed some time later. Ehrlich found that some organs were coloured blue while others had reduced the dye to the colourless leuco-product. Some organs which did not ordinarily reduce the dye did so when a state of asphyxia was established. In this way he was able to deduce the relative affinities of different tissues for oxygen. This book is more important however than as a record of a series of highly original experiments, for it contains Ehrlich's ideas and shows his essentially biochemical approach to the problems of cell respiration, cell metabolism and pharmacological action. In studying the specificity of stains for fixed cell preparations and the distribution of dyes when injected into the living animal Ehrlich was impressed by the importance of drug distribution in thera¬ peutics but unlike the majority of his contemporaries he was not satisfied with such vague terms as “colloidal adsorption” and con¬ stantly sought for a structural basis for pharmacological specificity. In his own words “chemical substances are only able to exercise an action on the tissue elements with which they are able to estab¬ lish an intimate chemical relationship”. In 1885 a few proteins had been isolated and a few enzymes examined but there was at this time no conception of the part played either by proteins or by en¬ zymes in cellular economy so that Ehrlich was forced to discuss his pharmacological problems using a terminology which appears ar-