Origin Story of Aspirin

One great myth in medicine is that aspirin was first used by Hippocrates to treat pain. He's the ancient Greek physician regarded as the father of medicine in fifth century BCE. But his writings barely mention willow.

Willow leaves and bark contain salicin which is the active ingredient that dulls pain. Most histories of aspirin include four-thousand-year-old Sumerian tablets that mention willow as pain relief. It was also used by the ancient Chinese and Greeks. But Hippocrates gets the most credit.

The problem is that the type of willow tree he used didn't have enough salicin in the bark to be effective when chewed or brewed as tea, as prescribed by him. The real credit goes to several groups of scientists. In the eighteenth century, Edward Stone, an English vicar used dried willow bark for five years to treat fevers. Drying it concentrates the salicin. Then in eighteen-twenty-six, Italian researchers extracted salicin from willow bark and two years later, a German pharmacologist purified it and named it salicin for willow in Latin. It was another fifty years before a clinical trial of salicin showed it reduced fever and inflammation.

Soon after it was mass produced in Germany and a chemist for Bayer pharmaceutical made it into the aspirin we know today, one that's easier on the stomach. An astonishing forty thousand metric tons of aspirin is still used. We're grateful that it not only relieves pain but reduces swelling and prevents blood clots!