The rabbit that had ingested the good stalks remained well, but the rabbit that had ingested the damaged stalks died from a hemorrhagic illness. Only spoiled hay made from sweet clover (grown in northern states of the USA and in Canada since the turn of the century) produced the disease. Schofield separated good clover stalks and damaged clover stalks from the same hay mow, and fed each to a different rabbit. In 1921, Frank Schofield, a Canadian veterinary pathologist, determined that the cattle were ingesting moldy silage made from sweet clover, and that this was functioning as a potent anticoagulant. For example, 21 out of 22 cows died after dehorning, and 12 out of 25 bulls died after castration. Cattle were hemorrhaging after minor procedures, and on some occasions, spontaneously. In the early 1920s, there was an outbreak of a previously unrecognized cattle disease in the northern United States and Canada.

The name ‘warfarin’ stems from its discovery at the University of Wisconsin, incorporating the acronym for the organization that funded the key research, “WARF” for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the ending “-arin”, indicating its link with coumarin. Dicoumarol, in turn, is derived from coumarin, a sweet-smelling but coagulation-inactive chemical found naturally in “sweet” clover (to which it gives its odor and name), tonka beans (also known as “cumaru” from which coumarin’s name derives), and many other plants. Warfarin is a synthetic derivative of dicoumarol, a 4-hydroxycoumarin-derived mycotoxin anticoagulant originally discovered in spoiled sweet clover based animal feeds. Warfarin is the most widely prescribed oral anticoagulant drug in North America. It was approved for use as a medication in 1954, and has remained popular ever since. In the early 1950s, warfarin was found to be effective and relatively safe for preventing thrombosis and thromboembolism in many disorders. It was initially introduced in 1948 as a pesticide against rats and mice, and is still used for this purpose. Warfarin, also known by the brand names Coumadin and Jantoven, is an anticoagulant normally used in the prevention of thrombosis and thrombosembolism, the formation of blood clots in the blood vessels and their migration elsewhere in the body, respectively. I hear this a lot so let’s check the facts!

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