1944

Publication of Dandy’s monograph on surgical treatment of intracranial aneurisms (Crowe, 106-07). Oswald Avery (Rockefeller Institute) demonstrates that DNA carries genetic information, that genes lay within DNA; DNA was the substance that transformed a pneumococcus from one without a capsule to one with a capsule, and its progeny inherited the change (Barry, 424-25). Allied supplies of penicillin officially described as “unlimited.” Fleming, Chain, and Florey share Nobel Prize for medicine (Wainwright, 67, 75). First publication of discovery of streptomycin by Schatz, Bugie, and Waksman (122). In Sweden, Ferrosan begins synthesizing Lehmann’s PAS (para-aminosalicylic acid [aspirin altered via an amino acid side chain added to the carbon atom at the bottom of the carbon hexagon); first child treated in March, 1944, followed by more extensive testing by Gylfe Vallentin, head of Renström’s Sanitorium in Gothenburg; followed by first publication in Lancet in January, 1946, reporting, inter alia, on bacteriological and animal experiments first performed in Jan, 1944. PAS was synthesized at precisely the same time streptomycin was discovered by Albert Schatz, and was administered to first patient with pulmonary TB a month earlier than streptomycin (F. Ryan, 243-261). Schatz left Rutgers in 1946 and brought suit against Waksman and the Rutgers Research and Endowment Foundation in 1950, demanding that Waksman refrain from representing himself as sole discoverer of streptomycin and that Rutgers provide an account of royalties received from license grants by the defendants; case settled in Schatz’s favor in December 1950 (F. Ryan, 332-339).