XXXIV. THE RELATIONS EXISTING BETWEEN CHEM- 

 ICAL CONSTITUTION, DISTRIBUTION, AND 

 PHARMACOLOGICAL ACTION. 1 



(An Address delivered in the "Verein fiir innere Medicin," Dec. 12, 1898.) 

 By Professor Dr. P EHRLICH. 



UNTIL recent years the relations between chemistry and medicine 

 were in general confined to purely scientific questions. In the last 

 decade, however, a change has taken place, such as has rarely been 

 seen in the history of medicine. One is justified in saying that at 

 the present time the chemical view constitutes the axis about which 

 the most important views in medicine turn, and that the two poles 

 are the synthetic construction of new therapeutic agents on the 

 one hand, and the discovery of specific therapeutic products of 

 living cells on the other. The contrast between these two methods 

 is very pronounced. In the first case, one makes use of the retort 

 and simple, definite reactions; in the other, of the mysterious powers 

 of living nature so infinitely well suited to their purpose. A greater 

 contrast cannot be imagined than that existing between the modern 

 medicaments, whose constitution is known down to the finest details, 

 and diphtheria antitoxin, which we know only through its specific 

 action and about whose chemical constitution we know absolutely 

 nothing. Thus far the genius of the most eminent chemists has not 

 availed to produce these bodies in a pure form and get an insight 

 into their chemical nature. All that this endless study has brought 

 forth is the conviction that we are dealing with atomic groups of 

 the utmost complexity, which for the present are entirely beyond 

 our chemical researches and which, so far as we can see, will long 

 remain so. 



1 Reprint from the v. Leyden Festschrift, Vol. I. 



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