The Birth of Chemotherapy

Hinkley. Oil on canvas mounted on masonite. Gift of Fisher Scientific IntemationaL Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections. Photograph by Will Brown 

In his earher work he made no mention of a specific chemical combination between the dmg and a receptor or side-chain in the ceU. However, he changed his mind in 1913 due to the work of Langley (1852-1925) on receptors [17, 22] and his own work on drug resistance [23]  

For many reasons I had hesitated to apply these ideas about receptors to chemical substances in general, and in this connection, it was, in particular, the brilliant investigations by Langley, on the effects of alkaloids, which caused my doubts to disappear and made the existence of chemoreceptors seem probable to me. 

The theory formed the theoretical basis for his work on chemotherapy, and the technique became popularly known as the magic bullet technique, the use of a drug that would kill only the agent being targeted. 

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The birth of chemotherapy is usually associated with P. Ehrlich, who, around 1907, introduced the now famous Salvarsan 606 for the treatment of syphilis (12.122). (In fact about a year earlier the now obsolete dyestuff, trypan red, had been found to be an effective agent against trypanosomiasis.) (See Table 11.25.)... 

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