Wonder drug: aspirin (1899)

Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, lived between 460-377 B.C. He left records of pain-relief treatments, which included the use of a powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree that helped relieve headaches, pains and fever. By 1829, scientists discovered it was a compound in willow plants called salicin that gave pain relief.

In 1899, Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist, searched for an aid to his father’s arthritis pain. He came across the plant Spiraea ulmaria with properties very similar to the bark of a willow tree, retrieved salicylic acid from it and combined it with acetyl chloride. The resulting product worked wonders alleviating pain. Hoffmann convinced his employer, the Bayer Co., to manufacture the drug under the name
Aspirin®. It was considered so valuable that after Germany’s defeat in World War I, Bayer was forced to give up its aspirin trademark and patent as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Aspirin adventures
• At first sold as a powder, the first aspirin tablets were made in 1925.
• Today, Americans consume almost 80 million aspirin tablets a day.
• No longer made from willow bark, it is now produced from crude oil.
• An aspirin taken at onset of a heart attack could save up to 10,000 lives each year, states the American Heart Association. So, in case of heart attack, grab an aspirin and call 911. The AHA reports that taking one 325-milligram aspirin within 24 hours of a heart attack reduces the risk of dying by 23 percent; decreases the risk of another heart attack; and lowers the risk of stroke.
• As a preventative, an aspirin a day helps keep the heart attack away.

The AHA recommends daily aspirin therapy for people who have had a heart attack. An aspirin a day has been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack by almost one-third for those considered high risk because of their family history.