(Excerpt from A Handbook on Antiseptics
The main object o...)
Excerpt from A Handbook on Antiseptics
The main object of this handbook is to give a concise account of the chief chemical antiseptics which have been found useful for surgical purposes during the present war. Some of the publications on this subject are not readily accessible to many who Wish to inform themselves as to cur rent European practice, and the requisite information has not yet, so far as we know, been collected into a form handy for reference. It appeared, therefore, that the present work might prove of use to surgeons and others in this country who are now taking up military duties connected with the care of the wounded.
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Henry Drysdale Dakin was an English biochemist, well-known as one of the inventors of the Carrel–Dakin method of wound treatments. His main working fields were amino acids and enzymes.
Background
Henry Drysdale Dakin was born on March 12, 1880 in London, England. He was the son of Thomas Burns Dakin, owner of a sugar refinery, and Sophia Stevens Dakin. Shortly after Dakin's birth his father obtained an iron and steel business in Leeds and moved the family to Yorkshire.
Education
Dakin attended elementary school and received his secondary education at Leeds Modern School in Yorkshire.
Upon leaving school he became apprenticed to the Leeds city analyst, T. Fairley, with whom he spent four years carrying out a good deal of analytical chemical testing, particularly of the city's gas supply. He later acknowledged the importance of this experience to his interest in biochemistry.
In October 1898 Dakin enrolled in Yorkshire College at Leeds (then a part of Victoria University, centered at Manchester). He participated in research on aromatic substitution and optical activity in the laboratory of J. B. Cohen, professor of organic chemistry, and, following his graduation (B. S. , 1901), remained for a year as Cohen's assistant and unofficial laboratory demonstrator. He also assisted Cohen in preparing his books for publication.
In 1902 Dakin was awarded a travel fellowship and studied protein chemistry with Albrecht Kossel (1910 Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine) at Heidelberg, sharing in the discovery of arginase.
In 1909 he received the D. Sc. degree from Victoria University (Leeds).
Career
In 1905 Dakin moved to New York City to work at the private laboratory in the home of the physician and chemist Christian A. Herter. Following Herter's death in 1910, Dakin took charge of the laboratory. He moved to Scarborough-on-Hudson in 1918 and reestablished the laboratory in a separate building where he continued his studies for the rest of his life. He never became an American citizen.
Upon the outbreak of World War I he offered England his services; in cooperation with the French he developed an antiseptic buffered hypochlorite solution for treating wounds, which has become known as Dakin's solution. This substance was widely used by the Allies during the war.
After his early work with Kossel led to the discovery of the enzyme arginase, they studied together its important role in the production of urea from the amino acid arginine. Dakin then discovered the enzyme glyoxalase with the assistance of H. W. Dudley; they published their results in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 1913, including their finding that the wide distribution of glyoxalase in the tissues indicated an important function in carbohydrate metabolism.
Dakin showed that an enzyme will attack two optical isomers in a racemic mixture at different rates and presented the first convincing evidence that oxidation of fatty acids as the first stage of their utilization by the body occurs at the betacarbon (adjacent to the carboxyl carbon). He was able to reproduce this reaction in vitro (that is, in a test tube) using hydrogen peroxide as a new mild oxidizing agent, and published his report in 1906 as "The Oxidation of Amido Acids with the Production of Substances of Biological Importance. "
In protein chemistry Dakin introduced the method of partial racemization of proteins, during which procedure interior amino acids of a protein chain will become racemized while terminal amino acids will not undergo this change. In 1912 he published his finding in the Journal of Biological Chemistry as "The Racemization of Proteins and Their Derivatives Resulting from Tautomeric Change. I. " This method has been of value in the study of immunology.
Dakin also introduced two important laboratory techniques into protein chemistry: the use of para-nitrophenylhydrazine as a laboratory reagent, and the quantitative separation of monoamino monocarboxylic acids. In 1905 Dakin published, in the Proceedings of the Chemical Society, the first work on the synthesis of a hormone, adrenalin ("The Synthesis of Substances Allied to Adrenalin"). In 1935 and 1936 he described, with R. West, the isolation from liver of a substance which seemed to be a major factor in the effect of liver extract on pernicious anemia ("Observation on the Chemical Nature of a Haematopoietic Substance Occurring in Liver, " in Journal of Biological Chemistry).
Unlike most modern research scientists, Dakin held no academic posts and had no students or colleagues with whom he collaborated for long periods of time.
Besides contributing to his profession through his important chemical studies, he also served it by assuming some of the editorial duties of Herter's Journal of Biological Chemistry after Herter's death. He continued as one of the editors until 1930. In 1935 he became, at G. W. Merck's personal request, an honorary scientific director of the pharmaceutical house of Merck and Company.
(Lang:- English, Pages 197. Reprinted in 2015 with the hel...)
Membership
Dakin was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Personality
His inherent shyness and dislike of publicity were quite compatible with work in a private laboratory, while academic politics were not in keeping with his character.
Connections
In July 1916 Dakin married Christian A. Herter's widow, Susan Dows Herter.