Cortisone in Popular Culture: Roueché, Ray, and Hench

In this article, the authors offer a new perspective on how the administration of Compound E (ie, cortisone) to a volunteer Mayo Clinic patient with rheumatoid arthritis and the patient’s subsequent miraculous improvement led not only to a major, successful clinical trial but also a Nobel Prize. The early and late side effects as an undesirable outcome of treatment of corticosteroids would soon follow. Corticosteroid side effects became known in...