Health Sciences · Temerty Faculty of Medicine
A white cardboard carton with blue printing on its lid contains five smaller red cartons. The red cartons, which are marked with black lettering, each contain a 5 ml glass vial of heparin. The vials have paper labels with black lettering and are sealed with a brown cap. The cartons also contain a paper information sheet.
Accession Number: 2026.med.60
Alternative Name:
Primary Materials: Cardboard, Glass, Heparin.
Written in pencil on the lid of the white carton: “Vitrum Heparin.”
Note that the white carton is printed with markings of Stille AB, a manufacturer of medical instruments. It was likely of convenient size for shipping and unrelated to heparin manufacturing.
Information on the glass vials includes the following “Kontr nr 2483” The same number is printed on the red cartons.
White carton: Height = 3, Width = 16.5, Length = 7.5; Red carton: Height = 2.3, Width = 2.3, Length = 5.3.
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.
These examples were produced by Vitrum AB in Stockholm. This was the first site to manufacture heparin for clinical use.
The heparin samples are unused and undamaged. At least two of the cartons have been opened.
Associated Instruments:
Apoteksvarucentralen Vitrum AB, Stockholm, Sweden.
Date of Manufacture: c. 1940s
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.
Charles H. Best (1959). “Preparation of Heparin and Its Use in the First Clinical Cases.” Circulation. 19, 1: 79–86.
Erik Jorpes (1935). “The chemistry of heparin.” Biochemical journal 29(8):1817-30.
Arthur F. Charles and David A. Scott (1936). “Studies on Heparin: IV: Observations on the chemistry of heparin.” Biochemical Journal, 30 (10), 1927–1933.
Swedish work on heparin was led by Dr. Erik Jorpes (1894 -1973) of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 1929, Jorpes had visited the Baltimore laboratory of physiologist Dr. William Henry Howell (1860–1945), where heparin had first been discovered by Dr. Jay McLean (1890 – 1957) in 1916 (Barrowcliffe 2012, 6). That year, he also visited Toronto presumably with an interest in the manufacturing of insulin. (Best 1959, 83-84)
Chemical development of heparin, and later clinical experiments, took place concurrently in Stockholm and Toronto. Each group benefited from the other’s research. Jorpes’ 1935 paper on the chemistry of heparin notes that the crude heparin was prepared in the manner described in the influential 1933 publications of Drs. David A. Scott (1892-1971) and Arthur F. Charles (1905-1972) of Connaught laboratories. (Jorpes 1935, 1822). Likewise, Scott and Charles acknowledge the chemical contribution of Jorpes in their subsequent publication. (Scott & Charles 1936, 1927). In his 1959 account of Toronto work on Heparin, Dr. Charles Best (1899-1978) notes a collaborative relationship between the two groups and cites friendly correspondence with Dr. Jorpes (Best 1959, 83-84).
Swedish production took place at Apoteksvarucentralen Vitrum AB in Stockholm, Sweden. Like Connaught in Toronto, Vitrum was already producing insulin and thus had experience with biological medicines. Vitrum began producing heparin in 1936.