Paul Ehrlich and “Magic Bullets” Flashcards

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Who was Paul Ehrlich?

Paul Ehrlich was a German doctor and scientist who looked for chemical cures for diseases in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A magic bullet is a drug that targets and kills one type of germ without harming the rest of the body.

He saw that some dyes only stained certain germs, so he thought a drug could be made to attack just one kind of germ.

Vaccines prevent people from catching a disease, while magic bullets are used to cure people who are already infected.

Salvarsan 606 was used to treat syphilis, a serious disease spread through sexual contact.

It was called 606 because it was the 606th chemical compound that Ehrlich and his team tested.

He and his team tried hundreds of different chemical compounds on infected animals to see which one killed the germ but did not harm the host.

Salvarsan 606 contained arsenic, so it could cause dangerous side effects, even though it did cure syphilis.

Ehrlich used the word chemotherapy to mean treating disease with chemicals that attacked germs inside the body.

His ideas showed that drugs could be designed to target germs, which encouraged other scientists to develop new magic bullets and later antibiotics.