The Quest for Cortisone

Chapter 3. Life After the Thyroid

27 Chapter 3 Life After the Thyroid What one man can invent, another can discover. —sherLoCK hoLMes, “The DAnCinG Men” With his work on the thyroid unceremoniously usurped and finished by rivals, Kendall began contemplating a new adventure in alchemy. unfortunately, the forty-year-old chemist was trapped in research limbo; a decade of thyroid study had forced him to focus his considerable expertise on an extremely narrow aspect of glandular biochemistry, and like the proverbial “top specialist in the field,” he’d learned “more and more about less and less” for so long that it now felt as if he knew “everything about nothing .” Kendall’s research abilities, already considered suspect by some of his Mayo Clinic colleagues, now appeared less promising than ever; a few even speculated that Kendall’s career in research had peaked. if true, this was terribly unfortunate, because opportunities for new fields of medical investigation were blossoming. The nineteenth century came to an end just as the disciplines of biochemistry and pharmacology were hitting puberty; invention was creating an army of new drugs, while the long-held physiological secrets of people’s vital bodily fluids were finally yielding to the process of discovery. some of these novel substances, like thyroxine, were derived from various glands and organs, while others came from sources so diverse—or bizarre—that one can only marvel at the circumstances leading to their discovery and use. now that the thyroxine studies were completed, Kendall wanted to take his research at Mayo in a fresh direction. one of the most promising areas of medical investigation at the time involved newly discovered biological agents produced within the body, many of which had potential pharmaceutical 28| Chapter 3 applications. for a thyroid chemist like Kendall, the prospect of conducting research on some of these nascent substances—especially those derived from various glands—was an attractive one. Kendall was surely aware of the fascinating work of this type going on around him, but in this target-rich research environment, what project would he pursue next—especially when his career likely hinged on the decision? To appreciate the dilemma facing the chemist, and to help understand his eventual choice in its proper historical context, it helps to consider some of the potential glandular research interests that were now competing for Kendall’s attention. Thyroxine wasn’t the first important substance to be extracted from a gland.1 in 1901 John Abel and Jokichi Takamine purified a compound from the medulla (inner) portion of the adrenal gland that exerted a powerful effect on the heart and blood pressure. it became known as epinephrine in the united states and as adrenaline in Britain.2 (The suprarenal glands thus became known from this time forward as the adrenal glands.) A year later ernest starling and William Bayliss discovered a compound produced in the small intestine and released into the bloodstream; it stimulates the pancreas to secrete digestive enzymes and bilelike substances. They called the intestinal compound “secretin,” and coined the word “hormone” (a messenger chemical that excites the recipient of the message) to describe its function as a signal.3 in the 1920s herbert evans and Joseph Long identified a chemical made in the anterior pituitary gland that controls growth of the body; a deficit of this hormone produces dwarfism, while an excess causes animals and people to grow into giants.4 Later named growth hormone, it was a compound ripe for further biochemical study. Although compounds synthesized by the adrenal medulla and pituitary gland offered promising fields of study in the 1920s, an even more interesting story was unfolding around another glandular hormone—insulin. The biggest discoveries involving this newly isolated miracle substance had already been made—and a nobel Prize had just been awarded to the investigators—but considerable chemistry research of precisely the type that Kendall specialized in remained to be done. Kendall’s certain interest in insulin begins with frederick Banting, a man five years his junior. Banting was born in november 1891 near Alliston, ontario, and a less likely candidate to win the nobel Prize in Physiology Life After the Thyroid| 29 or Medicine can scarcely be imagined. A poor student with below-average grades, Banting barely passed high school.5 After graduation he entered Victoria College of the university of Toronto (a divinity school) but reportedly flunked out. Apparently medicine was not as competitive then as it is now; he...