Chemotherapy: history and principles

Abstract

Bacteria were discovered by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in Delft (Holland) in 1676, but their role in causing infections, plagues, and epidemics was established only two centuries later, by Robert Koch through his work on anthrax. Koch, and his four postulates for ensuring that a suspected microbe actually caused a given disease, made it possible for biologists to study infectious diseases experimentally for the first time. This set the scene for the discovery of chemotherapy, but it was slow to arrive as we shall see.