Ich habe folgendes Zitat vom Paul Erlich gefunden, leider nur in einer englischen Übersetzung, nicht das Orginal. Aber ich vermute, der Begriff "Silver Buullet" in Verbindung mit Arzneimitteln geht auf dieses Zitat zurück:
"Hey! This is an excellent Microbe. It is big for a microbe, easily visible, easy to breed in mice. It kills them proper and always. Where could I find a better microbe than this Trypanosome, to help me find the Magic Bullet which is needed for the therapy? Alas! I wish I could find a dye that would heal o n e mouse, one tiny little mouse."
http://paul-ehrlich.de/Research/research.htmEDIT: Im Oktober 2008 gab es in Nürnberg eine Fachkonferenz mit dem Titel "2nd World Conference on Magic Bullets (Ehrlich II)", auf deren Homepage
http://www.ehrlich-2008.org/ folgendes zu lesen ist:
"The term “Magic Bullets” is a translation of the German word “Zauberkugeln”. It is believed that Ehrlich took that term from the first German opera “Der Freischütz” by Carl Maria von Weber. In that opera a young man needed to shoot the target successfully to be able to marry his bride. To achieve this he made a pact with the devil and got a magic bullet that would automatically hit the target.
That found its way to the target like Ehrlich’s compounds were planned to."
http://www.ehrlich-2008.org/magicbullets.htm