As early as BC 1550, people have known that willow leaves can relieve pain. Hippocrates, a famous ancient Greek doctor, also mentioned the use of willow juice to relieve pain and reduce fever in his works. 1763 On April 25th, Edward Stone, a priest from Oxfordshire, England, wrote a letter to the President of the Royal Society of London, reporting his application of willow bark to treat fever. The letter said that in the past five years, he had given this bark powder to about 50 patients, and almost never failed ... 1874, Scottish doctor Maclagan successfully used willow bark extract to lower the body temperature of patients with rheumatism and relieve their pain and edema. Two years later, his experimental report was published in the medical journal The Lancet. Later, some scientists isolated salicin from willow bark and prepared sodium salicylate, which also proved its antipyretic, analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects.

Since then, sodium salicylate has been used to treat fever, rheumatism and gout. But the taste of sodium salicylate is bitter, and people will feel very uncomfortable after taking it. From 65438 to 0897, felix hoffman, a German chemist working in Bayer Company, reformed sodium salicylate for his father suffering from severe rheumatism. Soon, he found a way to make pure acetylsalicylic acid. Subsequently, Herman Dreiser, director of Bayer Industrial Pharmaceutical Laboratory and one of the pioneers of pharmacology, made a detailed study of salicylic acid and affirmed its pharmacological effects. Therefore, Bayer registered the drug under the name of "aspirin" in February 1899.

The initial use and promotion of aspirin did not make many advertisements. Bayer initially provided it to doctors free of charge. Because of its good effect, it was immediately welcomed by patients. Doctors also appreciate this medicine. In just two years, there are 160 articles about it in various publications, which makes its influence in the world expand rapidly.

Enrique caruso, a famous Italian singer in the early 20th century, was once troubled by a headache. But after taking aspirin, caruso said that aspirin was "the only medicine that can relieve his pain". Czech writer Franz Kafka thinks aspirin is more magical. He believes that this is "one of the few drugs that can alleviate the pain of life."

In recent years, in addition to understanding the antipyretic, analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, aspirin has also been found to have an anti-platelet aggregation effect. John, a British pharmacologist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine with 1982. From 65438 to 0988, a study involving more than 20 thousand male doctors in the United States showed that aspirin could reduce the incidence of the first myocardial infarction by 44%, which opened a new chapter in aspirin's effective prevention of coronary heart disease and cerebral infarction. Because of its definite curative effect and low price, Margaret Hechler, then US Secretary of Health and Human Services, declared to the media that "an aspirin a day can improve the quality of the American people". In 2007, the American Association of Preventive Medicine listed aspirin, children's immunization and smoking cessation as the three most effective preventive medical measures. Therefore, today, with the emergence of new drugs and the gradual elimination of old drugs, it is still the most used drug in the world. 1994, the number of aspirin tablets, capsules and suppositories in the world reached 36.25 billion, with a total weight of 1. 1.6 million tons. 1997, the world output increased to 50,000 tons. If 500 mg tablets are arranged at least 1 10,000 km, they can travel back and forth between the earth and the moon.

The magic of aspirin doesn't stop there. 1988, Professor G. Kune of Australia first proposed that aspirin can prevent cancer according to the research results. In 2007, a 24-year follow-up study of nearly 80,000 registered female nurses in the United States once again confirmed that aspirin can significantly reduce the risk of cancer death.

As the famous Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega gasset said in his monograph The Age of Aspirin, aspirin is a "boon brought by civilization". ▲