Two centenaries in the history of chemotherapy

摘要

This year marks the centenary of the death of Louis Pasteur (1822-95) and the birth of Gerhard Domagk (1895-1964). The two men are closely related in that one was the pioneer of the germ theory of disease and the other discovered the first chemical agents -the sulphonamides - capable of destroying a range of bacteria within the human body. Looking back, it is difficult to comprehend the immense changes in medicine that occurred within the span of two consecutive lifetimes, especially bearing in mind that Domagk was still alive well within current memory. If we go back to the 1840s, when Pasteur was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, we enter a world where many of the most basic concepts of modern medicine still lay undiscovered. In particular, there was strong support - especially among the German naturphilosophen and their French counterparts - for the possibility of spontaneous generation.