ORGANIC CHEMICAL INDUSTRY — STINE 191 



Perrin H. Long and his associates at the Jolins Hopkins Medical 

 School. 



During the past year a related compound, sulfapyridine, has 

 shown great promise in the treatment of pnemnonia, which claims 

 an annual toll of some 100,000 lives in the United States. 



As a result of the isolation and synthesis of certain of the vita- 

 mins, various diseases due to dietary deficiencies can now be pre- 

 vented or cured. Among the more important of these essential 

 organic materials are vitamin A, a deficiency of which leads to night 

 blindness and increased susceptibility to infection; the antiscorbutic 

 vitamin C, now available as synthetic ascorbic acid; vitamin P-P 

 (nicotinic acid), an insufficiency of which causes the dread pellagra; 

 the antirachitic vitamin D, now available as irradiated 7-dehydro- 

 cholesterol; and the antiberberi vitamin Bi (thiamin), previously 

 referred to in comiection with the effect of organic chemicals on 

 plant growth.^^ 



Similarly, the research chemist has established the constitution 

 of, and synthesized, certain of the hormones, those little-understood 

 secretions of the ductless glands which in some degree affect the 

 functioning of the mind as well as regulate the chemical reactions 

 of the body. Developments in this field offer definite promise for 

 the cure of certain mental ills which have baffled medical science 

 for ages. 



The tremendous increases in organic chemical manufacture have 

 made such wide and important demands for research laboratories 

 and increased personnel to man these laboratories as to result in a 

 great country-wide stimulation of research. From fundamental re- 

 search in such sciences as chemistry, physics, biology, and pharma- 

 cology will certainly come the great developments of tomorrow, espe- 

 cially in the amelioration of man's health. Chemotherapy, itself as 

 fundamentally important as the first work which flowed from Pasteur's 

 laboratory, is nurtured by the organic chemical industry. A long 

 list of new organic compounds awaits the attention of the research 

 workers in pharmacology and experimental medicine. Pharmaco- 

 logical development will continue to be supported to an increasing 

 degree because of the development and growth of a flourishing or- 

 ganic chemical manufacturing industry in the United States. 



In closing I should like to leave this thought with you. Those who 

 would attribute to our scientific development the blame for our 

 present national and international ills take an entirely superficial 

 view of the picture. They overlook the horrible wars that have 

 been waged all down the years when there was no science as we know 



" Science in progress, p. 147 et seq., Yale University Press, 1939. 



