Sahachiro Hata

In this Japanese name, the family name is Hata.

Doctor Hata bronze bust, at Hata Memorial Museum in Shimane prefecture.

Sahachiro Hata (秦佐八郎, Hata Sahachirō^?); (23 March 1873 – 22 November 1938) was a Japanese bacteriologist who developed the Arsphenamine drug in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich.

Hata was born in Shimane Prefecture, and completed his medical education in Kyoto. He studied epidemic diseases under the famous Dr Kitasato Shibasaburō at Kitasato's Institute for the Study of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, and later studied immunology at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. While in Germany, he took the opportunity to learn about chemotherapy at the German National Institute for Experimental Therapeutics in Frankfurt, where he assisted Paul Ehrlich in the discovery of arsphenamine, which proved effective in curing syphilis. It was called Salvarsan 606 because it was the 606th drug that Ehrlich tried.

After his return to Japan, he helped found the Kitasato Institute, of which he became a director. He also lectured at Keio University.

Dr Paul Ehrlich & Dr Hata Sahachiro

[edit] References

Low, Morris. Building a Modern Japan: Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Meiji Era and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan (2005). ISBN 1-4039-6832-2
Porter, Roy. Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine. W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 2004). ISBN 0-393-32569-5
Waller, John. The Discovery of the Germ: Twenty Years That Transformed the Way We Think About Disease ("Revolutions in Science" series). Columbia University Press (2003), ISBN 0-231-13150-X