Ehrlich, Paul (1854-1915)

Carbon copies of Martha Marquardt's transcripts of Paul Ehrlich's copybooks, 1898-1915, made by her during the early 1950s. There are 6 series, representing both copies of letters sent by him, and notebooks. There are not complete sets of transcripts for all of these: in some cases the originals themselves appear to no longer exist. Users should be aware that, according to a letter from Dr E A Underwood, Director of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, to Gunther Schwerin, 25 Mar 1963 (WA/HMM/CO/Eau/13), there are some misreadings by Marquardt of scientific terms in the originals, as, although she was capable of deciphering Ehrlich's writing, she was not herself a scientist. The originals are now in Boxes 4-22, 27-27A, 28-28A, 29-36 in the Paul Ehrlich Collection at the Rockefeller Archives Center, and another set of transcripts in Boxes 80-86 there.

1898-1956

9 boxes

These transcripts surfaced during the clearing out of the Bentley House stacks, April 2007

Paul Ehrlich was a leading medical researcher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1908. He is best remembered for 'Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet', Compound 606, the arsephanemine drug salvarsan which was a cure for syphilis, discovered in 1909.

Shortly after the Second World War, Gunther Schwerin, one of the grandsons of Paul Ehrlich, located Ehrlich's copybooks in Germany, and sent them, along with other material, to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London for safekeeping. While they were there, Martha Marquardt, formerly Ehrlich's secretary, and one of the few people able to read his handwriting, prepared seven sets of typewritten transcripts. These carbons are the 3rd set (of 4) copies, formerly in the possession of Sir Henry Dale, and presented by him to the Library early in 1958. The originals, and 3 sets of copies, are now held with the Paul Ehrlich archive in the Rockefeller Archive Center, 15 Dayton Avenue, Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591 USA, by whose kind permission this set of copies is made available in the Wellcome Library

Paul Ehrlich archive in the Rockefeller Archive Center, 15 Dayton Avenue Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591 USA