Arsenic and modern medicine

摘要

A hundred years ago this month, one of the first casualties of the Great War was a German chemist, Alfred Bertheim, who died on 17 August 1914. An early volunteer in the German army, he donned his uniform, tripped over his spurs, fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. However, his main claim to fame is not the manner of his death but his role in the development of the first modern chemotherapeutic agent.