The treatment or prevention of a disease by administration of a chemical. The term was first used by Paul Ehrlich, discoverer of the arsphenamine treatment for syphilis (1910). He said that chemotherapy results from the interaction of chemically reactive groups on drugs with chemically active receptor groups on parasitic cells and that an effective drug must be of quite low molecular weight. His achievement was one of the great triumphs of biomedical science. More-recent important achievements are the development of antimalarials, the synthesis of sulfa drugs, the discovery and proliferative development of antibiotics (penicillin, streptomycin, etc.), and the synthesis of cortisone. Much research effort has been devoted to the chemotherapeutic investigation of cancer. An antibiotic, adriamycin, is said to be effective against certain types of cancer. Treatment with 60Co, either by irradiation or as a tissue implant, has been successfully used. A broad spectrum of antidepressant drugs to treat acute mental depression is another outstanding development of chemotherapy.
