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From: "::darkshadows::" <bat@cave.org>
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Subject: Where did Aspirin come from?
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Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:24:08 -0500
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Where did Aspirin come from?
Where did Aspirin come from? Aspirin's history is a lengthy one, from
its discovery in the fifth century BC, to its use as a bartering tool
in World War I, to its newly discovered benefits and uses.
A person could get a headache thinking about all of the detours
aspirin has taken on the road to becoming today's common, inexpensive,
cure-all medication.
Aspirin's roots are deep, and reach back to Hippocrates himself, the
Greek father of modern medicine, who held the recipe for a pain
reliever and fever reducer made from the bark and leaves of the willow
tree. The key the Greek father of modern medicine held from sometime
between 460 and 377 BC, was buried with him, and was not rediscovered
until 1758 by an English clergyman.
Scientists, now aware of the pain relieving properties of willow bark,
struggled to strip it down to the exact ingredient responsible for its
powers, and finally did so in the 1820s. They narrowed their search to
salicin, an early form of the family of drugs named salicylates, of
which aspirin is a member.
Severe stomach upset from the salicylic acid extracted willow bark
posed a problem for scientists. They attempted to remedy this side
effect by combining the acid with sodium to neutralize the acid, but
it failed to reduce the belly aching.
A French chemist, Charles Frederic Gerhardt put an end to the dilemma
in 1853, by adding acetyl chloride to the sodium salicylate mixture.
He published the results of his findings, but did not pursue his
creation past this point, even though it upset the stomach less than
the currently available compound. Mr. Gerhardt saw no future in the
time-consuming preparation of his recipe, which he felt did not
improve much upon the original medicine. His decision left people
grabbing their guts, and stomaching the old standby, sodium
salicylate.
Salvation came in 1897, in the person of an eager, young Felix
Hoffman, who sought, and found, a drug to help relieve the painful
symptoms of his father's arthritis. This driven chemist, an employee
of the Bayer Company, found and dusted off Gerhardt's old publication,
mixed a batch of the recipe, and discovered that it actually worked.
Hoffman used his connection with his employer to pitch his idea, and
Bayer reluctantly agreed to produce the medicine they named Aspirin.
They invented the name Aspirin by combining the initials A from acetyl
chloride, the SPIR from the plant they extracted the salicylic acid
from, Spirae ulmaria, and the IN, because it was the common ending for
medications at that time. Bayer launched Aspirin in powder form and as
a tablet in 1915. Aspirin was an instant success.
Aspirin's success ended up costing the Bayer Company a great deal of
money, when the U.S., England, France, and Russia forced it to
surrender the trademark to them, as part of Germany's war reparations
at the close of World War I. Bayer gave up the trademark in 1919, as
part of the Treaty of Versailles, which explains why the aspirin,
stripped of its trademark, is now written in the lower case.
Today, aspirin holds the title of being the most widely used drug, one
that is no longer solely used as a pain reliever and as a fever
reducer. Physicians have shown aspirin to be effective in combating
arthritis pain, in reducing the risk of heart disease, of death
following a heart attack, of cancer, if taken two times weekly, and of
developing preeclampsia during pregnancy. It is doubtful that aspirin
will ever again be lost to the annals of history.
Did you know?
* Bayer also held, and had to give up, its trademark to heroin at
the end of World War I?
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