Enriching the history of ADCs

I have recently been passed an article written by Thomas Huxley for The British Medical Journal in 1881, describing none other than the concept of ADCs. I cannot take any credit for this discovery, all plaudits should go to Randall E. Morris, to whom many thanks is given for sharing this, it was a fantastic piece of detective work!

The relevant section is included here:

“It will, in short, become possible to introduce into the economy a molecular mechanism which, like a very cunningly contrived torpedo, shall find its way to some particular group of living elements, and cause an explosion among them, leaving the rest untouched.”

(see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2264086/pdf/brmedj05026-0025.pdf)

To find out that Huxley pre-dates Ehrlich by 20 years in his description of ADCs feels a little like an anthropologist finding an earlier undiscovered prehistoric human species.

I suspect that Ehrlich’s “magic bullet” resonated more and was therefore more impactful than Huxley’s “cunningly contrived torpedo” even though Huxley’s explanation is probably more accurate for what an ADC is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley