[The unknown history of heparin's discovery]

Heparin was accidentally discovered in 1916 by Jay McLean, a second-year medical student working at the Department of Physiology of the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, under the direction of the eminent scientist William Howell. The discovery of heparin was not followed by immediate practical use and only twenty years later was recognized its clinical utility in the treatment of post traumatic venous thrombosis of the lower extremities, by the canadians Charles Best and Gordon Murray. Jay McLean expired in 1957, dismayed and depressed with the indiference devoted by the scientific community to its discovery and only several years later the fact was recognized in a simple ceremony to testify its participation in the discovery of a drug that promoted the progress and development of vascular and cardiac surgery, the extracorporeal circulation, the haemodialysis, the organ transplantation and the treatment and prevention of arterial and venous thromboembolism.