Synthetic æstrogens

The field of chemotherapy in general has shown the large numbers of compounds which can be used for the same purposes. One only has to contemplate the development of the so‐called “sulpha” drugs to provide an example of this. The first compound produced by Domagk 1 was the complex dye‐stuff Prontosil. This substance obtained wide acceptance for the treatment of certain infections, but almost completely disappeared after the brilliant observations of Trefouel, Nitti and Bovet 2 that in the rabbit the compound was split at the azo linkage, liberating sulphonamide, and that this simple substance itself was active against certain infections. As we know, this was the start of a whole series of drugs of which there must be by now many hundreds on the market.