Against Clots & Rats

Arthur D. Schulte, son of the developer of the Schulte national chain of cigar stores, was making rapid strides in his father's footsteps when, at 32, he fell ill with thrombophlebitis--inflammation of leg veins, with formation of clots that could be fatal if they reached the lungs. That was 20 years ago. Schulte's physician, Dr. Irving Wright, casting around for a drug to prevent clot formation (none had yet been proved effective in man), appealed to Nobel Prizewinner Charles H. Best, co-discoverer of insulin. He wanted some of the heparin that University of Toronto laboratories had just begun to extract from beef lungs and liver. Dr. Best sent all he could spare.

In little more than two weeks, Patient Schulte's condition improved and the clotting appeared checked. Since then he has had infrequent, mild recurrences, has led an active life. From the presidency of Park & Tilford, Arthur Schulte moved to investment banking in Wall Street. Last week, in gratitude for heparin's help, ex-Patient Schulte footed the bills for a Manhattan conference staged by the New York Heart Association on progress in anticoagulant drugs.

From Rotten Clover. Heparin has had a distinguished history since Schulte's early case, has proved invaluable in a variety of conditions where clotting is a danger, notably after a patient has already had a heart attack or stroke from a thrombus (clot). Heparin's advantage over most rival anticlotting drugs: it acts immediately. Its disadvantages: it is expensive and must be injected under the skin or infused into a vein.

While physicians were learning to make the best use of heparin, Agriculturist Karl Paul Link and fellow researchers at the University of Wisconsin discovered another potent anticoagulant, dicoumarin, in rotted sweet clover (TIME, Feb. 14, 1944), which had been killing cattle. It is still widely used for long-term treatment of thrombosis patients, because it can be given handily by mouth. But the Wisconsin labs have synthesized more than 100 related substances, and one of these, Link suggested, would make a safe and deadly rat poison. He was right. Named warfarin,* it is usually applied to bait grain. Unsuspecting rats keep on eating it, eventually die of internal bleeding. In the U.S., said Link last week, 70,000 tons of warfarin-poisoned bait have been used without a single human death and with few accidents.

Best Testimonial. Physicians who had no objection to using a drug made from rotted clover that killed cattle were more wary of one touted as a rat poison. But warfarin, believes Chemist Link, is the best anticoagulant now available: it can be used in smaller doses than dicoumarin; it can be given by mouth, by injection or rectally. It works fairly rapidly, and an overdose can be promptly canceled with a form of vitamin K. Best testimonial to its safety: Chemist Link disclosed that warfarin is the anticoagulant (unnamed by Press Secretary James Hagerty) that President Eisenhower has been taking since his heart attack.

-*Not from warfare, but from the initials of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, plus the -arin ending of the coumarin family.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.