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Last week Syntex announced that a group of its chemists headed by Dr. George Rosenkranz had at last accomplished the feat, starting with diosgenin from cabeza de negro.

Both Syntex and Searle now obtain their diosgenin from Mexican yams, which grow wild in the jungles.

The pill's hormones are derived mostly from a chemical called diosgenin, which until 1945 was obtainable only in small quantities from tropical plants.

Then Dr. George Rosenkranz, at that time a Syntex research chemist, found that the Mexican yam, or barbasco root, yielded much larger amounts of diosgenin.