Health Sciences · Temerty Faculty of Medicine
A tall, silver coloured cardboard carton contains a glass vial and a paper information sheet. The carton has a white label printed with blue on a pale green background. The vial has a paper label with the same colouration and a red rubber cap.
Both the carton and the vial are marked with red handwritten lettering. The carton also contains a folded paper information sheet.
Accession Number: 2026.med.62
Alternative Name: Liquaemin
Primary Materials: Cardboard, Glass, Rubber.
Written in red ink on both the carton and vial: ” AUG 9 1940″
Stamped in black in on the base of the vial label: “403050”
Carton: Height = 6, Width = 2.5, Length = 2.5.
Heparin is a blood anticoagulant. It increases the activity of antithrombin, a protein produced by the liver that regulates blood clotting. It is a biological medicine, meaning that it is derived from animal tissues.
The development of Heparin in the mid 1930s facilitated or improved a number of medical therapies. This included the prevention of blood clots during the use of cardiopulmonary bypass technology, which revolutionized cardiac surgery around the middle of the 20th century. Heparin is still widely used today.
The carton is split along its bottom edge. The rubber cap of the vial is dried and cracked. The vial is unused and unopened.
Associated Instruments:
Roche-Organon, Inc. Nutley, New Jersey.
Date of Manufacture: 1940
Provenance:
T. W. Barrowcliffe (2011) “History of heparin.” In Heparin-A Century of progress, ed. by Rebecca Lever, Barbara Mulloy and Clive P. Page 3-22. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
In 1939, Roche-Organon produced the first clinically usable heparin to be manufactured in the United States. Their manufacturing process using beef lung tissue was essentially the same as that introduced by Drs. David A. Scott (1892-1971) and Arthur F. Charles (1905-1972) of Connaught laboratories in Toronto. Organaon continued to produce heparin under the trade name Liquaemin for at least sixty years. (See Barrowcliffe 2012, 6).