Cortisone, initially known as ‘compound E’ was the medical sensation of the late 1940s and early 1950s. As early as April 1949, only a week after Philip Hench and colleagues first described the potential of ‘compound E’ at a Mayo Clinic seminar, the New York Times reported the drug’s promise as a ‘modern miracle’ in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Given its high profile, it is unsurprising that historians of medicine have been attracted to study the innovation of cortisone. It arrived at the end of a decade of ‘therapeutic revolutions’, kicked off by penicillin transforming the treatment of bacterial infections and ending with hopes of a revolution in the treatment of non-infectious, chronic inflammatory diseases. Despite these studies of cortisone’s introduction, few historians have taken the story forward and considered how cortisone was adopted and adapted into clinical practice. This article tells the longer of how the drug and its derivatives were taken from research laboratories and integrated into clinical practice; what has in recent decades become known as translational medicine (TM). In exploring cortisone’s first decade in Britain, we focus specifically on its role in the treatment of RA. Our approach is always to consider cortisone’s use in the context of other treatments available to clinicians, and at local and national institutional settings. We do not discuss the many other therapeutic uses of cortisone, which ranged for topical applications for skin diseases to the management of cancers, especially childhood leukaemia, nor do we discuss its close analogue ACTH—AdenoCorticoTropic Hormone. We think there are lessons in our study for TM policies today.

中文翻译：

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专刊-转化医学之前：实验室临床关系在转化中迷失？英国可的松和类风湿性关节炎的治疗，1950-1960 年。


可的松最初被称为“化合物 E”，在 20 世纪 40 年代末和 50 年代初引起了医学界的轰动。早在 1949 年 4 月，就在 Philip Hench 及其同事在 Mayo Clinic 研讨会上首次描述“化合物 E”的潜力一周后， 《纽约时报》报道称该药物有望成为治疗类风湿性关节炎的“现代奇迹”。 RA）。鉴于其高知名度，医学史学家被吸引来研究可的松的创新也就不足为奇了。它是在十年“治疗革命”结束时到来的，这场革命以青霉素改变细菌感染的治疗方法拉开序幕，并以治疗非传染性慢性炎症疾病的革命的希望结束。尽管有这些关于可的松引入的研究，但很少有历史学家将这个故事向前推进并考虑可的松是如何被采用并适应临床实践的。本文详细讲述了药物及其衍生物如何从研究实验室中取出并融入临床实践；近几十年来被称为转化医学（TM）。在探索可的松在英国的第一个十年中，我们特别关注它在治疗 RA 中的作用。我们的方法始终是在临床医生可用的其他治疗方法以及当地和国家机构环境中考虑可的松的使用。我们不讨论可的松的许多其他治疗用途，包括局部应用皮肤病到治疗癌症，特别是儿童白血病，我们也不讨论其密切类似物促肾上腺皮质激素（ACTH）——腺皮质热带激素。我们认为我们的研究对当今的 TM 政策有一些教训。