Answer:
The aspirin we know came into being in the late 1890s in the form of acetylsalicylic acid when chemist Felix Hoffmann at Bayer in Germany used it to alleviate his father's rheumatism, a timeline from Bayer says. Beginning in 1899, Bayer distributed a powder with this ingredient to physicians to give to patients. The drug became a hit and, in 1915, it was sold as over-the-counter tablets.
Aspirin's uses for heart patients came to light in 1948 when California physician Dr. Lawrence Craven recommended an aspirin a day to reduce heart attack risk, based on what he had observed in patients.More than one-third of all adults, and four out of five people with heart disease, use aspirin regularly, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented in a 2006 study. And the number of regular aspirin users rose 20 percent from 1999 to 2003.
Everything that Eichengrün claimed in 1949 about the discovery of aspirin is compatible with the chronology of events presented here, which in turn depends to a great extent upon the reliability of the statement by Eichengrün that Dreser set acetylsalicylic acid aside for 18 months. This statement, however, has never been challenged. As Eichengrün did not refer to his own role in the discovery of aspirin in the chapter in which the statement appeared in 1918, it would be unreasonable to argue that the source is tainted. Also, Hoffmann—who lived until 1946 without ever publishing his own account of the discovery of aspirin—repeatedly spoke of Dreser setting the drug aside, albeit without indicating for how long. But had it only been for a short period, he would not have mentioned it.
In deciding whether it is Hoffmann or Eichengrün who initiated the events leading to the introduction of aspirin, the unreliability of the 1934 footnote about Hoffmann must be balanced against the plausibility of the 1949 paper by Eichengrün. The most reasonable conclusion is that Arthur Eichengrün was telling the truth when he wrote that acetylsalicylic acid was synthesised under his direction and that the drug would not have been introduced in 1899 without his intervention.
F Bayer & Co was truly fortunate in having Eichengrün as an employee, yet it is unlikely that he would have discovered aspirin had he not been working for the company. Its successor, Bayer AG, had every reason last year to celebrate proudly the centenary of the most widely used drug in history.
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