Drugs Discovered through Serendipity in the Laboratory
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چکیده
The department of internal medicine at the University of Strassburg in the 1880s was noted for its investigations into intestinal worms. Adolf Kussmaul, the director, asked two young assistants, Arnold Cahn and Paul Hepp, to treat patients with naphthalene as it had been used elsewhere as an internal antiseptic. The young doctors were disappointed with the initial results, but Hepp persevered with the naphthalene treatment in a patient suffering from a variety of complaints besides worms. Surprisingly, the fever chart revealed a pronounced antipyretic effect from this treatment. This had not been observed before, but further investigation revealed that Hepp had wrongly been supplied by Kopp’s Pharmacy in Strassburg with acetanilide instead of naphthalene! Cahn and Hepp lost no time in publishing a report on their discovery of a new antipyretic. This appeared in August 1886, and a small factory, Kalle and Company, situated outside Frankfurt set up in competition with Hoechst’s Antipyrin1 (i.e. phenazone), mischievously calling their product Antifebrin1. In 1908, however, the Farbenfabriken Hoechst obtained control of Kalle and Company, which had grown considerably in size largely due to the success of their antipyretic. As acetanilide was cheaper to manufacture than other antipyretics, it remained in use for many years, despite the fact that it inactivated some of the haemoglobin in red blood cells, a medical condition known as methaemoglobinaemia. Sometimes acetanilide was used illicitly as a cheap adulterant of other antipyretics.
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تاریخ انتشار 2005