For more than half a century, heparin and vitamin K antagonistshave defined anticoagulant therapy for the short-term and long-termmanagement, respectively, of thrombotic disorders of the venoussystem. The history of their development is instructive. In1922, at the annual meeting of the American Physiological Society,William H. Howell of Johns Hopkins Medical School presentedan extraction protocol for isolating heparin preparations. Dicoumarol,a bacterial antagonist of vitamin K in spoiled sweet clover,was recognized as the agent responsible for a fatal hemorrhagicdisease in livestock by Karl Link and Wilhelm Schoeffel of theUniversity of Wisconsin. In both . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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From the Division of Cardiology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (J.L.); and the Cardiovascular Thombosis Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC (R.C.B.).
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