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in trips to visit her, Paul, for the most part, courted Hedwig through daily letters. An excerpt from one reveals a charmingly besotted man of science: “Although I am not allowed, dear Hedwig, to delight in your presence,” he wrote on March 2, 1883, “the thought of you has not left me for one moment. I must confess I am of no use at all for anything else, but I cannot help it. I have never been as unscientific as now. . . . My microscope is rusting, my beloved dyes are becoming moldy, the laboratory is collecting dust, and the [lab] animal keeper is shaking his head in disbelief.” Married in August 1883, the Ehrlichs settled down in Berlin; within a year the two became three with the birth of their daughter Stefanie.

A year before the birth of a second daughter, Marianne, Ehrlich’s life was shattered in March 1885 with the suicide of his revered mentor and ally, Dr. Frerichs. The pain of this loss was compounded by the frosty relationship he developed with his new boss, Frerichs’s successor, Dr. Carl Gerhardt. A stern taskmaster, Gerhardt decreed that Ehrlich must now devote the entirety of his time to patients. This abruption of his research could not have come at a worse moment. Ehrlich, using a dye called methylene blue in experiments with frogs, had just succeeded in staining living nerve tissue. This was a major technical breakthrough, for he, like other scientists, had always worked with inert samples of tissue and blood. Vital staining, as this was called, allowed him to begin examining the effect of chemical compounds on live cells, the important next step toward the crowning achievements of his career (a subject continued in the following chapter). But for now, this work would have to be shelved. Unable to pursue what he most loved, Ehrlich, miserable under Gerhardt’s command, finally resigned his post at the Charité after two years.

A tender moment between Paul Ehrlich (portrayed by an almost unrecognizable Edward G. Robinson) and his wife, Hedwig (Ruth Gordon), in a scene from the 1940 Warner Bros. film Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet

Complicating his decision—or perhaps, in a certain way, simplifying it—he’d developed a persistent cough from which he’d been unable to recover. Shortly after his resignation, he discovered evidence of tuberculosis in his own sputum (likely contracted from patients’ TB cultures), a finding that was sadly ironic because, just a few years earlier, he had invented the heat-dried staining method employed to make such a diagnosis. With a firm nudge from his worried wife, Ehrlich decided then not only to put his career on hold but also to take the radical step of leaving Germany altogether. At age thirty-four, he formalized plans to move his young family to Egypt, where he hoped he’d recuperate more quickly in the warm, dry climate.

Many years later Paul Ehrlich looked back on these final weeks in Berlin. During his lowest moments while working under Dr. Gerhardt, he recalled, those times when he felt bitter, dejected, he’d sneak away to his dusty laboratory, open the dye cupboard, and drink in the bright colors. He’d remind himself, “These here are my friends, who will never desert me.”

SEVEN

Detectable

BLOOD NEVER SLEEPS. EVEN WHEN WE’RE DEAD TO THE world, sad and torpid lumps under the covers of a sickbed, our blood is mounting its most vigorous defense. Here’s the drill: Approximately thirty minutes after we launch into sleep, the killers come out in full force—the “killer” T cells. Killer cells are lymphocytes, one of the five broader varieties of white blood cells. Their territory is our bloodstream and the connecting lymphatic tissue. Killers are created for a single purpose: to destroy foreign agents—viruses, bacteria, toxins. When a killer cell comes upon a virus, for example, it gloms onto it, then secretes proteins that riddle the germ like Swiss cheese, slaying it—mission accomplished—but at the same time sacrificing itself. Killers are most numerous at night, though they operate around the clock, as do their fellow T cells, the “helpers” and “suppressors,” which