He began with a hunt for antimicrobial chemicals, in part because he already knew that chemical dyes could specifically bind microbial cells. He infected mice and rabbits with Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite responsible for the dreaded sleeping sickness, then injected the animals with chemical derivatives to determine if any of them could halt the infection. After several hundred chemicals, Ehrlich and his collaborators had their first antibiotic hit: a brilliant ruby-colored dye derivative that Ehrlich called Trypan Red. It was a name—a disease juxtaposed with a dye color—that captured
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