1934

Kendall first to crystallize an adrenal hormone capable of maintaining adrenalectomized animals (Rasmussen III, 305). In 1937, work of Tadeus Reichstein (Switzerland) and Cyril Long (Yale physiologist) “left little doubt that the hormones of the adrenal cortex active in mineral metabolism and in energy metabolism [via regulating of carbohydrate metabolism] were distinct” (310). By mid-1943, interim assessment of military potential of Compound E (later, cortisone) provided “equivocal and unimpressive evidence (317) and in late 1943, the physiological research on adrenal hormones was declassified, though the Committee on Medical Research and Vandevar Bush agreed that the effort to synthesize the cortical hormones should continue (318). Still later in 1943, Reichstein beat the American in the race to synthesize the (intermediate) Compound A, and in Dec, 1944, Merck chemist Lewis Sarett finally achieved synthesis of Compound E (319). In 1947, Sarett found an economical route to synthesize Compound E, then dubbed cortisone, and Merck “promptly set about producing a large batch, supplying the material for the famed 1948 clinical trial in which patients long crippled by rheumatoid arthritis walked (indeed, danced) with ease again, leading to the 1950 Nobel Prize for Kendall, Reichstein, and Philip Hench, Kendall’s rheumatologist colleague” (320).