Translation

[From a lecture delivered to the Berlin Medical Society on 22 June 1910]

The brilliant work to which [Paul] Ehrlich has dedicated himself almost incessantly during recent years had the aim of describing systematically and testing experimentally chemical remedies that cure infectious diseases…Ehrlich has had hundreds of such drugs examined in animals infected with trypanosomes and spirochaetes and has achieved excellent cures with some of them. It was however a triumph of science when he was able to announce in November of last year that diamidoarsenobenzol, tested by Hata, briefly named Preparation 606, could lead to a rapid cure, in rabbits, of large primary lesions teeming with spirochaetes. This happened after administering a single effective dose that cleared the lesions of spirochaetes within 24 hours. It was clear that the therapy of syphilis was therewith wrested from the level of empiricism and brought to a firm natural scientific approach. Ehrlich has now indicated very precisely the cautionary measures under which a clinical trial has to be performed when a drug has been thus examined [in animals]…