Word: dicumarol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Thrombosis, the specialists reported last week, is no longer so dreaded. In the past two years investigators have had notable results with two anti-clotting drugs: heparin and dicumarol. Heparin is a substance in the liver and lungs first isolated in 1916; dicumarol is found in spoiled sweet clover (its anti-clotting property was first discovered when it was found that cattle feeding on it sometimes bled to death). Both drugs prevent clots from forming...
Heparin acts within a few minutes, but it is expensive and has to be injected every few hours. Dicumarol is cheap and easy to take (in pills), but it takes 24 hours to work. Doctors combine them: heparin for the emergency, dicumarol for longer-range effects...
...made his discovery when cattlemen in North Dakota and Canada complained that some of their stock died from bleeding scratches and bumps, like human hemophiliacs. He found the guilty chemical in spoiled sweet-clover hay, named it Dicumarol because it is formed from the harmless chemical, coumarin, which gives fresh clover its smell. The cows' problem was solved by planting clover with a low coumarin content...
...Link and co-workers went on to get Dicumarol in pure form and then to synthesize it. They found that in the body it makes salicylic acid. Another anticoagulant, heparin, was already on the market. It is also used to keep donors' blood fluid until it can be processed. But it is an expensive extract of ox lung and liver, must be given by injection, and is hard to control. Therefore surgeons (who worry lest a fatal clot undo their work) took up Dicumarol...
...patient taking Dicumarol need not fear that he will bleed to death. Dr. Link explained that it can be counteracted by 1) a small transfusion, 2) a large dose (an injection) of vitamin K, the antihemorrhagic vitamin in leafy vegetables...