Technology & Medicine › Electric age
Aspirin
August 1897 (Hoffmann at Bayer; Eichengrün later claimed credit); sold from 1899· Invention or discovery· Germs, drugs & genetics
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details, dates or numbers uncertain.
Acetylsalicylic acid, a gentler form of the willow-bark painkiller, made at Bayer in 1897 and sold worldwide from 1899.
See it on the Technology & Medicine map →How it works
Willow bark was used against pain and fever since ancient times. Its active ingredient becomes salicylic acid in the body, which irritates the stomach. On August 10, 1897, Felix Hoffmann at Bayer in Germany made pure, stable acetylsalicylic acid, which patients tolerated better; Charles Gerhardt had made a crude form in 1853. Bayer sold it as Aspirin from 1899, as tablets from 1900. In 1971 John Vane showed it works by blocking prostaglandins, chemicals behind pain and inflammation.
Why it mattered
Aspirin became one of the most used drugs in history and an early mass-produced, brand-name medicine. Low daily doses are now also used to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
How we know
Hoffmann's lab notebook entry of August 10, 1897; Bayer's 1899 trademark; Vane's 1971 paper in Nature and his 1982 Nobel Prize; large clinical trials on heart protection since the 1980s.
Still unknown or debated
Chemist Arthur Eichengrün, who was Jewish, claimed in 1949 that he directed the work and that Nazi-era accounts erased his role; historian Walter Sneader backed him in 2000, but Bayer disputes it.
Connections (3)
▸Ancient Egyptian medicine prescribed the willow extracts refined into AspirinMostly agreed
The connection
Egyptian papyri, like Sumerian tablets before them, prescribe willow and other plants containing salicylates, chemicals that ease pain and inflammation. The thread was picked up much later: Edward Stone reported willow bark against fevers in 1763, chemists isolated salicin in 1828, and in 1897 Bayer's Felix Hoffmann made stable acetylsalicylic acid, sold as aspirin.
When and how
Egypt, Ebers Papyrus about 1550 BC; England, 1763; Germany, at Bayer in Elberfeld, 1897.
How sure are we?
Willow appears in Egyptian and Mesopotamian medical texts, and chemistry confirms willow bark contains salicin.
Debates and open questions
Whether Egyptians used willow for pain or mainly for wounds is debated, and Arthur Eichengrün later claimed he, not Hoffmann, led aspirin's creation.
▸Aspirin came from the Bayer labs that later found Sulfa drugsWell documented
The connection
Bayer grew from a dye maker into a drug company, and aspirin's success helped make it a research powerhouse. Its labs screened thousands of dyes in animals. There, in 1932, Gerhard Domagk found that the dye Prontosil cured streptococcal infections in mice: the first sulfa drug, and the first broad antibacterial. Bayer was by then part of IG Farben.
When and how
Bayer's labs in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), Germany: aspirin in 1897; Prontosil, made by chemists Josef Klarer and Fritz Mietzsch, tested in 1932 and published in 1935.
How we know
Company lab records, Domagk's 1935 paper, and his 1939 Nobel Prize, which the Nazi government forced him to decline at the time.
Debates and open questions
In 1935 Pasteur Institute scientists showed Prontosil's active part was sulfanilamide, an old, unpatentable chemical; whether the company knew this earlier is debated.
▸Aspirin was given in possibly toxic doses during the 1918 influenza pandemicDebated
The connection
In 1918 doctors and health officials recommended aspirin for flu, sometimes 8 to 31 grams a day, far above today's limit of about 4 grams. Physician Karen Starko argued in 2009 that aspirin poisoning, which can cause fluid in the lungs, may have contributed to some deaths, especially at the October 1918 peak.
When and how
The US, Britain and elsewhere, autumn 1918; the US Surgeon General, the Navy and medical journals recommended aspirin, whose US patent had expired in 1917.
How sure are we?
Starko's 2009 paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases cites 1918 dosing advice and autopsy reports; it remains a hypothesis, not proof.
Debates and open questions
Critics note deaths also soared where aspirin was scarce, so most experts think the virus and bacterial pneumonia were the main killers.