Salvarsan Again

Salvarsan Poisoning

a spectacular nature as to impress one with its specificity, but in very few cases indeed could such a belief be continued for any length of time. I have noticed that in the majority of cases, either repeated and refractory recurrences have followed, dashing to the ground the fervent hopes of the most optimistic experimenter, or such disastrous consequences have resulted which might well make t...

A Salvarsan Series

Salvarsan – the First Chemotherapeutic Compound

Early History If defined as the use of a specific compound discovered as the result of a systematic search for a cure for a specific disease, then chemotherapy is less than a century old. The first example was the introduction in 1910 by Paul Ehrlich of an organoarsenic compound he named Salvarsan, which provided the first real cure for the extremely unpleasant disease syphilis (caused by the p...

The Treatment of Syphilis with Salvarsan

Among the various books dealing with Salvarsan this will naturally take a prominent place as it has received the benediction of Professor Ehrlich and may thus be regarded as being almost an official document. A large part of the book is devoted to a description of individual cases showing the great value of Salvarsan, especially in refractory cases of syphilis. The occurrence of relapses in a f...

Paul Ehrlich and the Salvarsan Silver Jubilee

The treatment of syphilis by the organic arsenical compounds is such an established part of everyday practice that it is hard for the practitioner of the present generation to realize that only a quarter of a century ago the first reports of Paul Ehrlich's great discovery were being received with a combination of scepticism and enthusiasm by the essentially conservative medical profession. Both...