What is Chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is one of the main forms of treating cancer. It is treating diseases, mostly cancer, by using chemical drugs or anti-cancer drugs to kill the cancer cells. Chemotherapy comes from the word chemo, meaning chemicals, and therapy, meaning treatment.
When was Chemotherapy first used and invented?
Chemotherapy was first developed by a German chemist named Paul Ehrlich in the early 1900's. In World War I, mustard gas was used in chemical warfare and was a highly effective blood production suppressor. This drug was studied along with nitrogen gases at Yale. They thought the affects of the suppressor could have a similar affect on cancer. Ehrlich was very interested in the thought of chemical disease treatment, but he wasn't very confident about the final outcome. Above the door to his lab, he had hung a sign "Give up hope oh ye who enter." In 1908, Ehrlich did an experiment using rabbits which later led to him developing the first form of chemotherapy to treat syphilis using arsenicals. Scientists studied the effects of chemicals to treat micrometastasis on breast cancer patients and found that it was very effective and this became the first time people had began to study adjuvant chemotherapy. These anti-tumour drugs were then further developed to maximize effectiveness and minimize toxicity.