Aspirin

Aspirin was coined by Bayer chemist Heinrich Dreser in 1899. The name breaks down as: 'a' from acetyl (the chemical group added to salicylic acid), 'spir' from Spiraea ulmaria (meadowsweet, a plant source of salicylic acid), and '-in' as a common pharmaceutical ending. The drug — acetylsalicylic acid — had been synthesized by Felix Hoffmann at Bayer in 1897, though the French chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt had produced it as early as 1853 without pursuing its medical applications.

The active compound came from a much older tradition. Hippocrates prescribed willow bark tea for pain and fever around 400 BCE. Willow bark contains salicin, which the body converts to salicylic acid. The Reverend Edward Stone of Chipping Norton reported willow bark's fever-reducing properties to the Royal Society in 1763. Pure salicylic acid was isolated in the 1800s but irritated the stomach badly. Bayer's innovation was adding an acetyl group, which reduced stomach irritation while preserving the pain-killing effect.

Bayer trademarked Aspirin with a capital 'A' in 1899. After Germany's defeat in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles stripped Bayer of its trademark in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom as part of war reparations. 'Aspirin' became a generic term in those countries — lowercase 'a' — while remaining a Bayer trademark in Germany and some other nations. A drug name became a casualty of war.

Aspirin is now one of the most widely consumed drugs in the world — approximately 40,000 metric tons per year, or about 120 billion tablets. In the 1970s, John Vane discovered that aspirin works by inhibiting cyclooxygenase enzymes, blocking prostaglandin production. He won the Nobel Prize in 1982. A compound from willow bark, known to Hippocrates, synthesized by a Bayer chemist, stripped of its trademark by a peace treaty, and explained at the molecular level eighty years after its launch.