From Coal Tar

Two young Harvard chemists wrote a modest note to the American Chemical Society. It said: "We wish to record the first total synthesis of quinine."

So ended a 90-year-old search for a method of manufacturing a synthetic for the drug that the Japs (by their seizure of the natural supply in the East Indies) have made a critical weapon of war.

Dr. Robert Burns Woodward, 27, and his 2 7-year-old associate William von Eggers Doering detailed the 15 difficult steps of their process, in sentences bristling with 20-letter chemists' words. They also remembered to pay tribute to the "elegant work" of a German named Rabe who in 1908 had revealed the complex formula for quinine. The formula showed that quinine could be made from coal tar.

To the Factory. Doing it was no small job. The final step--commercial production--still remained to be taken. Chemists Woodward & Doering had made only 1/100th of an ounce from five pounds of expensive, involved chemicals.

In Washington a Government group called a meeting to see how the discovery could be turned into prompt, practical manufacture. Polaroid Corp., sponsor of the Harvard research and owner of the synthetic quinine patent, promised quick licensing.

The dire need of U.S. troops, particularly in the Pacific, for some preventive of malaria has run production of atabrine to two-and-a-half billion tablets annually, twice the prewar quinine output. On a price basis it would be hard for synthetic quinine to compete, but in war price was likely to be no object. Quinine is more practical and has other medical uses.

To the Lab. Beyond that, the historic Woodward-Doering discovery had further possibilities. It also turned up three other drugs that formerly came only from the cinchona tree: quinidine (essential in several severe heart ailments); cinchonidine and cinchonine (which replaces quinine for patients intolerant to the basic drug). There is even some sound hope that among the 15 stepping-stones to quinine, there may be one which will lead to the ideal malaria cure: a killer of the blood parasite which would ultimately wipe out one of the world's worst scourges.

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