Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 50. (Budapest, 1969)

KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK — ELŐADÁSOK - A. A. Efremenko: Ehrlich és az orosz orvosok (Angol nyelvű közl.)

EHRLICH AND RUSSIAN DOCTORS by A. A. EFREMENKO (Moszkva) Uhrlich was always on friendly terms with Russian scientists. Well-known researchers such as Gabrlchewsky, Kloinitsky, Korshun, Finkelstein and many others worked in his laboratory. These friendly relations were evidently the expression of mental affinity among the German scientists and Russian researchers. According to Ehrlich himself, the first stimulus which prompted him to take up the research-work in which he later achieved such outstanding successes was a paper written by a Russian scientist K. Geibel (later professor of pharmacology at the Kiev University). When summing up the results of his studies Ehrlich wrote in 1910 [1]: "This paper largely follows the line in medicine which I have been urging for many years and which has prepossessed me ever since I first took up medicine. During my first semester, when I read Geibel's paper on lead poisoning [2], it struck me that the way in which a pharmaceutical preparation is distributed in the organism can be of primary importance for rational therapy. This idea occupied my mind to such an extent that I had to get to closer grips with it and thus partly left the tracks of normal study." In 1910 the well known microbiologist Bronstein [3] remarked: "The stimulus given to Erlich's mental apparatus by this Russian doctor's paper must have been tremendous, sinse it took him right away from the normal path of academic study and it needed 25 years of hard work before the germ of the first idea became law: corpora non agust nisi fixata". Many Russians studied in Ehrlich's laboratory and he always drew attention to the important role which they played in the development of chemotherapy. At Ehrlich's request Iversen tried out preparation 006 in Petersburg and these trials were the first in the world in which Salvarsan was used for the treatment of relapsing fever. Iversen also tested preparation G06 for the treatment of syphilis and malaria. Yakimov and Kol-Yakimov tried Salvarsan for the treatment of tick-relapsing fever of Africa and sleeping sickness. Ehrlich publicly stressed the importance of Iversen's and other Russian doctors' works. In 1913 an expedition led by the Russian protozoologist Yakimov (1870-1940) went to Turkestan to study tropical diseases of human and animals. Ehrlich provided important help in the preparation of this expedition and actually paid some of the expenses. Ehrlich was on friendly terms with many Russian doctors. He wrote: "I shall be glad to answer any further questions and if needed, will