Discovery of the Wonder Drug: From Cows to Cortisone

Featured Article: Hench PS, Kendall EC, Slocumb CH, Polley HF. The effects of the adrenal cortical hormone 17-hydroxy-11-dehydrocorticosterone (Compound E) on the acute phase of rheumatic fever; preliminary report. Mayo Clin Proc 1949;24:277–97.2A passage in the New Testament describes a paralyzed man miraculously regaining the ability to stand and walk. In a small town in southeast Minnesota on the morning of September 21, 1948, a similar miracle began to unfold. A 29-year-old woman was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) for severe rheumatoid arthritis that caused debilitating joint immobility. She was injected with a small amount of an experimental new drug, at the time named Compound E, which was discovered and investigated in tandem by Edward C. Kendall and Philip S. Hench. Two days and 2 more injections later the patient could walk and left the hospital to enjoy a 3-hour shopping spree. Just 2 short years later Kendall and Hench shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Tadeus Reichstein, a Swiss scientist who independently isolated hormones of the adrenal cortex (1). The …