We''ve all been plagued with aches, pains and fevers at one time or another in our lives. Everyone seems to have their own preferences for how bad it must be before they take something, and what that something is. But chances are, at one time or another in your life you've taken an aspirin. Did you know that aspirin was one of the oldest natural remedies, and that it was the first pill mass marketed?

      The use of aspirin in one form or another goes back centuries. Every Native American tribe had a medicine man. They didn't know the molecular structures of their plant-based medicines, but they had a wealth of practical knowledge. The medicine men would use the bark of willow trees (usually in thr form of tea) to treat pain and fever. When chemists analyzed willows in the last century, they discovered "salicylic acid, the basis of the modern drug aspirin.

      But aspirin goes back even further in history. Ancient Egyptians took an infusion of dried myrtle leaves to treat muscle pain, while Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, prescribed willow bark tea for the pain of childbirth. The myrtle leaves were also found to contain salicylic acid.

      Willow bark surfaced in Europe in 1758 when the Reverend Edward Stone of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, chewed a twig of white willow to ease pain and fever. He was so impressed with its effect that he wrote to the Royal Society in 1763 to alert them to its benefits.

      An additional source of salicylic acid was found in 1835 by the German chemist Karl Jakob Lowig.  This new wonder pain killer was found  in Meadowsweet (Spiraea ulmaria), a wild flowering plant that grows on riverbanks over much of Europe. Twenty years later salicylic acid was successfully being synthesized in the laboratory, enabling mass production for the first time.

      Nearly anyone who tried this new drug thought it an amazing discovery, but though is was effective for relieving pain and fever, it was not without side effects. Apparent to anyone who used it, salicylic acid cause severe irritation to the mouth and throat. It upset stomachs as well. For more than a few people, using the drug caused more problems that it solved! Obviously, something needed to be done.

 
    The solution was provided by 29 year old Felix Hoffmann, a pharmaceuticals graduate working at the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The problem was personal for Hoffman, who had an arthritic father who could not tolerate salicylic acid. In I897 Hoffman invented acetyl salicylic acid (ASA) - a new formulation of salicylic acid which did not have the unpleasant side effects of its predecessor. But much to Hoffmann's surprise, his new discovery was shelved.

      The person in charge of Bayer's testing laboratories shelved Hoffmann's new drug for two reasons. Initial tests on ASA were not encouraging. Secondly, Bayer was far more interested in Hoffmann's other discovery,  diacetylmorphine, a drug Bayer wanted to use in cough medicines. Given the brand name `Heroin', it is now a Class A Controlled Drug. Hoffmann's ASA would have to wait.

      It was not until January 1899, after further successful tests, ASA was given its brand name, Aspirin. So where did the name aspirin come from? The `A' stands for acetyl, the `spir' is from Spiraea ulmaria, and the `in' - no one knows!

      Aspirin was initially sold only to doctors and hospitals, but it was an instant success. It was also the first manufactured medicine to be sold as a tablet rather than a powder.

      The rest is history. Today many pharmaceutical companies sell forms of aspirin. Today, the world consumes over 100 billion aspirin tablets a year! Of course, we still have our individual preferences. Britons prefer their aspirin dissolved. Americans like to swallow tablets and the French prefer their pain medicine to be delivered by way of suppositories! But there are yet a few more twists to the aspirin story.

      In WWI, America seized Bayer's New York factory as well as the right to its patents, aspirin included. For 75 years, aspirin was manufactured by two different companies. It was not until 1974 that Bayer in Germany bought back its own name and product in a £650 million deal!  One might rather humorously wonder if all those headaches were worth it!