Take Two Aspirin and Call Me in the Morning

It's a rare household that doesn't have a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Estimates indicate Americans consume about 50 million aspirin tablets every day ... that's more than 15 billion little white pills a year!

It was over a hundred years ago, in 1899, that aspirin was first distributed in powdered form to physicians. Two years earlier, in 1897, Felix Hoffman, a German chemist with the Bayer Company, produced a stable form of acetylsalicylic acid. The compound was named aspirin.

Hoffman had been searching for a treatment for his father's arthritic pain at the time. As one who would never dream of traveling around without aspirin handy, I take my hat off to Mr. Hoffman.

The true origins of this drug go back much further. Willow bark, the precursor to modern-day aspirin has been used for centuries to lower fevers and reduce pain. Historical records tell us Chinese healers prescribed it in 500 B.C. The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides gave willow bark to his patients for inflammation during the first century.

It wasn't until the early 1970s, that the medical world began to understand how aspirin works. Scientists discovered it inhibits the production of chemicals, called prostaglandins, that are involved in inflammations.

Another theory was put forth in 1992, by Dr. Tony Yaksh, a professor of anesthesiology at University of California, San Diego. He and a colleague discovered that aspirin-type drugs help dampen pain sensations by preventing nerve activation in the spinal cord and possibly within the brain. After all this time, it seems scientists are still working to unlock the secrets of aspirin.

In the 1980s the use of aspirin was expanded beyond simple pain relief to that of a potential lifesaver. Aspirin was approved by the FDA for both the prevention of recurrent stroke in men and for reducing the risk of recurrent heart attacks.