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One hundred years ago this month, aspirin was first introduced as a medicine for human use. In this report from the European Aspirin Foundation, the drug's long and distinguished history is described.
The Aspirin Age, as the Spanish philosopher Ortego Y Gasset was to christen it, began in 1899. Its origins, though, can be traced much further back in time - indeed as far back as Hippocrates, the Greek generally considered to be the father of medicine. Around the year 400BC, he apparently recommended a brew made from willow leaves to ease the pain of childbirth. Willow leaves, chemists were to show many centuries later, contained salicin, a substance closely related to aspirin.
For a very long time, however, little progress was made in improving pain control and fever.
Then in the early years of the 17th century came tales of a miraculous 'fever tree', which grew in certain parts of South America. In 1633, an Augustinian monk called Calantha, who lived in Peru, described how the bark of this tree, made into powder and given as a beverage, cured people of high fevers.
Legend had it that in 1638 the bark was used to treat the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the viceroy to Peru. Within a short time the Jesuits began importing the bark into Europe. Soon it became known as Jesuit's or Peruvian bark, and the name subsequently given to the 'fever tree' served to commemorate the legend.
Cinchona bark was used as an analgesic and antipyretic for nearly two centuries before its active principle was isolated. This was quinine, today prescribed almost exclusively to treat malaria. It did not prove...