Aspirin King of drugs

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XVII (Issue No.8) August 1965

Year

1965

Subject

Aspirin

Physiological effects of aspirin

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The accidental discovery of a common drug which everybody now uses

Fulltext

■ The accidental discovery of a common drug which everybody now uses. ASPIRIN: KING OF DRUGS We think of “miracle” drugs in terms of spectacu lar achievements: a life snatched back by penicillin; streptomycin curing infec tious diseases against which medical science was helpless; Aureomycin and Chloromy cetin pulling the fangs of an cient killers. Magnificent though these accomplishments are, the average individual might go through life without requir ing the wonder working of these drugs. But hardly a family goes a week without tapping ,the aspirin bottle. This humble stand-by on the bathroom shelf is ready when children get leg aches in the middle of the night — such aches used to be known as “growing pain6.” Aspirin tides over sister’s toothache until she can get to the dentist; and is taken freely — and safely — when any member of the family gets a cold, flu, or headache. All evidence, in fact, indi cates that it won’t cure any thing. But it offers merciful relief foi*a thousand aches and pains, and thus can pro bably make a stronger claim than any other drug for be ing the miracle drug su preme! For very good reasons, it is the most widely used of all drugs — with a personality of its own and a record un matched elsewhere. It is miraculously cheap and mira culously safe — so nontoxic that it may be taken without medical supervision. Aspirin even has its own built-in alarm system — ears almost always ring before serious trouble from overdosage dev elops. By now, everyone is fami liar with the names of such medical heroes as Jenner, Pasteur, Ehrlich, and Fle ming. Not one in a million could name the discoverers of aspirin. August 1965 35 The story begins at the middle of the last century. At the time, the best way for a chemist to make a name for himself was to discover as many new chemical com pounds as possible. It made no difference whether uses were found for them. Thus, at the end of this period, sulfa was discovered — and allowed to lie idle for decades. In 1853 a German chemiist named von Gerhardt found acetylsalicylic acid — later to be christened aspirin. Until 1899, it remained a useless laboratory curiosity. Then a chemist working for Friedrich Bayer & Company, in Elberfeld, Germany, had a problem. Felix Hoffman’s father suffered from rheuma toid arthritis and couldn’t stand prolonged treatment with salicylate drugs. Would son Felix look around the laboratory for some new sa licylate which might ease his pains? Hoffman asked the help of Heinrich Dreser, head of Bayer’s drug research. With a fortunate hunch, they in vestigated von Gerhardt’s forgotten white powder. They subjected it to all sorts of tests, and finally it looked safe enough to try on old man Hoffman’s rheumatism. It would be stretching the facts to report that he did a jig after swallowing some of the powder. Still, he did feel better. Hoffman and Dreser began to pass their white powder to other peo ple around Elberfeld, and one fact kept cropping up. If a person taking the drug happened to have a headache, the headache dis appeared! Maybe they had an important discovery on their hands! Their white powder at least deserved a name, and tentatively they hit on acetylspiric acid. They trimmed this down further to make the word aspirin — which was pronounceable in all lan guages. Aspirin got off to a slow start. As they should with any new drug, physicians re garded it with suspicion. They wondered what ill ef fects it might have on kid neys, liver, heart, brain. Happily, no ill effects show ed up. They wanted to find whe ther aspirin really relieved 36 PANORAMA pain — or whether people just imagined it. For this job, they tested volunteers to see how much electric current it took to cause pain when applied to teeth. Then they dosed the subjects with aspirin — and tried again. This time, it took consider ably more current to make teeth tingle. Gradually, Bayer started to fill prescriptions for the paper-wrapped white powder, but real mass production didn’t come until 1915 when aspirin first appeared as the now-familiar white tablet. Then scores of other manu facturers in many countries began producing it. Aspirin was a curious drug. It didn’t cure disease, but it erased symptoms of a vast range of illnesses. It drove fever down, dulled pain, stopped headache. There were other curious things about aspirin. Even now, no one knows how it works. And no one knows why it has no effect on nor mal body temperature, but has the ability to reduce fe ver. Apparently, aspirin has some effect on the heat cen ter of the brain — the body’s thermostat. But as yet no one knows its mechanics of action. Because of the drug’s great safety, most suicide attempts fail. With massive doses, most people become horrid ly ill. Physicians wash out their stomachs and they sur vive. One man was thus sav ed after taking 300 pills. It can be used as a gar gle for sore throats, as a paste to relieve soreness from ill-fitting dental plates, as a pill to reduce pain from rheumatism, twisted backs, and other muscular ailments. Id is the most widely used remedy for one of the most common of all human ma ladies — headache. By using thousands of tons of the drug, the public has given a convincing demons tration of its great safety. This isn’t to advise anyone to take large doses on a con tinuous basis — a procedure which might mask symptoms of serious diseases. But used as its makers intend that it should be used, aspirin is in a class by itself — the most versatile drug in the world. — by J. D. Ratcliff from Coronet. August 1965 37

pages

35-37

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