March 6, 1899: Tales of Hoffmann's Aspirin: "
1899: Felix Hoffmann, a young pharmacist working for the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, patents a new pain reliever. The trademark name is aspirin.
Hoffmann, who was said to be seeking an effective pain reliever for his father's rheumatism, successfully synthesized acetylsalicylic acid in August 1897. It would later be marketed as aspirin — 'a' for 'acetyl' and 'spirin' for Spirea, the genus name of the source plant for salicylic acid, the pain-relieving agent.
That August, incidentally, was an especially fertile period for Hoffmann: The month also saw him synthesize heroin, which he accomplished accidentally while attempting to acetylate morphine to produce codeine. Obviously, that discovery didn't pan out like aspirin.
The benefits of salicylic acid as a pain reliever and fever reducer had been understood since antiquity. Salicylic acid, an extract from willow bark, was commonly found in salves and teas of the period. Though effective in reducing pain and fever symptoms, it could also carry some pretty unpleasant side effects, notably stomach irritation.
When Hoffmann produced his acetylsalicylic acid, no less than the head of Bayer's pharmaceutical laboratory, Heinrich Dreser, tried it out to gauge its potential toxicity. Satisfied that this represented a true leap forward, Dreser fast-tracked the new drug from animal and human testing to a patent application.
The application was rejected in Germany, because it turned out Hoffmann had not actually invented acetylsalicylic acid: Two chemists, one German and the other French, had synthesized the substance decades earlier. Hoffmann, however, was the first to synthesize it in a stable, usable form.
The U.S. patent office had no such qualms over priority and issued a patent to Hoffmann and Bayer, which began an aggressive worldwide marketing campaign. The German patent office came around, too, and Bayer AG still holds the rights to the trade name aspirin in more than 80 countries. Elsewhere, as in the United States, the word is often used generically to refer to almost any brand of acetylsalicylic acid and even other over-the-counter pain relievers.
Legal maneuvering aside, Hoffmann's wonder drug was a gold mine. Bayer certainly cleaned up, seeing as how it held a monopoly on aspirin through the end of the First World War.
Following Germany's defeat, Bayer was forced to sell off its U.S. production plants as part of war reparations. An American company, Sterling, acquired the rights to sell aspirin under its own name in the United States.
Although aspirin is not without its own side effects — Reye's syndrome is associated with a reaction to acetylsalicylic acid — it remains one of the world's most widely used pain relievers.
Source: Various
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