B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S W O M E N S H I S T O R Y 2 0 2 4 Women's History Month 12 THE FIRST SYNTHESIZED ORAL CONTRACEPTIVE: ORIGINAL U.S. PATENT OFFICE PRINTING OF PATENT #2,744,122 12. DJERASSI, Carl; MIRAMONTES, Luis and ROSENKRANZ, George. United States Patent Office 2,744,122. Patented May 1, 1956. Delta4-19-NOR-17alpha-ETHINYLANDROSTEN-17beta-OL-3-ONE and Process. [Washington, DC: United States Patent Office, 1956]. Quarto (7-1/2 by 11 inches), single leaf of wove paper printed on recto and verso for two pages; custom card portfolio. $12,500 Rare original United States Patent Office printing of patent number 2,744,122, the patent for norethisterone, the first synthesized oral contraceptive, developed from Mexican yams by a team of chemists led by Carl Djerassi in 1951, and one of three synthesized oral contraceptives used by Gregory Pincus—with whom Djerassi shares the title of “the father of birth control pill”—in early clinical trials. Djerassi started working at the small pharmaceutical company Syntex in Mexico City in 1949. There he established how to synthesize cortisone from a natural product derived from the Mexican yam. He then found that the same starting compound could yield norethisterone, a mimic of progesterone, which controls the female menstrual cycle. Norethisterone was the first highly active oral progestogen to be synthesized, followed soon after by noretynodrel (1952) and norethandrolone (1953), which were synthesized by Frank B. Colton at Searle in Skokie, Illinois. In early 1951, reproductive physiologist Gregory Pincus obtained a small grant with the help of Abraham Stone (medical director of Planned Parenthood) and Margaret Sanger (founder of the American birth control movement) to begin hormonal contraceptive research. Unbeknownst to Pincus, Sanger and Stone, the actual chemistry of the Pill had already been invented, but Djerassi had not yet tested the orally effective form of synthetic progesterone as a contraceptive. Pincus’ research started on April 25, 1951, with reproductive physiologist Min Chueh Chang continuing the 1937 experiments of Makepeace, et al. which showed that injections of progesterone suppressed ovulation in rabbits. Progesterone was abandoned as an oral ovulation inhibitor following these clinical studies in favor of synthetic chemical compounds with progestogenic activity. Chang found Djerassi’s norethisterone [the present patent] among the most promising compounds, and it was developed into the second progestin after Enovid to be used in an oral contraceptive. While both Pincus and Djerassi have alternately been called “the father of the birth control pill,” Djerassi was among the earliest of scientists to pioneer the chemical bases of what would become the Pill, and he would be the first to gain national recognition for his contribution. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1978 for patent #2,744,122 (this one). Djerassi’s conviction that the Pill made the sexual liberalization of the 1960s possible is widely shared, and chemical control of the fertility cycle was a key ingredient in subsequent advances in reproductive technologies, beginning with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the late 1960s. This is an original Patent Office printing, contemporaneous with the issuance of the patent. Later printings would be a photocopy; the present document is printed and thus original. Fine condition.
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