Returning from a conference late one evening, in the cramped compartment of a night train from Berlin to Frankfurt, Ehrlich animatedly described his idea to two fellow scientists, “It has occurred to me214 that . . . it should be possible to find artificial substances which are really and specifically curative for certain diseases, not merely palliatives acting favorably on one or another symptom. . . . Such curative substances—a priori—must directly destroy the microbes responsible for the disease; not by ‘action from a distance,’ but only when the chemical compound is fixed by the parasites.
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