page_title: Paul Ehrlich
section_title: Methylene blue
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Ehrlich / Research / Chemotherapy / Methylene blue
caption_attribution_description: description: Mundschleimhaut des Menschen mit Methylenblau angefärbt author: H. Hoffmeister source: Foto I shot with my Fuji Digicam M603 date: 1.10.2006
context_page_description: Paul Ehrlich was a Nobel prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. He is credited with finding a cure for syphilis in 1909. He invented the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria. The methods he developed for staining tissue made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which led to the capability to diagnose numerous blood diseases.
  His laboratory discovered arsphenamine, the first effective medicinal treatment for syphilis, thereby initiating and also naming the concept of chemotherapy. Ehrlich popularized the concept of a magic bullet. He also made a decisive contribution to the development of an antiserum to combat diphtheria and conceived a method for standardizing therapeutic serums.
  In 1908, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology. He was the founder and first director of what is now known as the Paul Ehrlich Institute.
context_section_description: In the course of his investigations Ehrlich came across methylene blue, which he regarded as particularly suitable for staining bacteria. Later, Robert Koch also used methylene blue as a dye in his research on the tuberculosis pathogen. In Ehrlich's view, an added benefit was that methylene blue also stained the long appendages of nerve cells, the axons. He initiated a doctoral dissertation on the subject, but did not follow up the topic himself. It was the opinion of the neurologist Ludwig Edinger that Ehrlich had thereby opened up a major new topic in the field of neurology.
  After mid-1889, when Ehrlich was unemployed, he privately continued his research on methylene blue. His work on in vivo staining gave him the idea of using it therapeutically. Since the parasite family of Plasmodiidae – which includes the malaria pathogen – can be stained with methylene blue, he thought it could possibly be used in the treatment of malaria. In the case of two patients so treated at the city hospital in Berlin-Moabit, their fever indeed subsided and the malaria plasmodia disappeared from their blood. Ehrlich obtained methylene blue from the company Meister Lucius & Brüning AG (later renamed Hoechst AG), which started a long collaboration with this company.
caption: Staining in vivo with methylene blue of a cell from the mucous membrane of a human mouth
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix M603", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix M603   Ver1.00", "Image DateTime": "2006:09:23 14:57:20", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "250", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1233", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7773", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "10/43", "EXIF FNumber": "16/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:09:11 12:02:10", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:09:11 12:02:10", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3/2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "21/10", "EXIF ApertureValue": "84/25", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-39/50", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "149/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "723", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "661", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1092", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2678", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2674", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}