Jeffreys: Aspirin

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Diarmuid Jeffreys, Aspirin : The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug. New York : Bloomsbury, 2004. 335 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index.

This book is more in the nature of a pop-journalistic history than an analytical, scientific history of the subject, but it's still a pretty good read. In prose that was at least serviceable Jeffreys relates the convoluted scientific, pharmaceutical, chemical, business and political details of the colorful history of aspirin, and manages to lead the reader through the thicket with clarity. It also did a good job of convincing me of the unique place in history aspirin has, and how it might be the wonder drug.

These introductory paragraphs set the tone:

Somewhere close by – in the bathroom cabinet, tucked away in a desk drawer, at the bottom of an old jacket pocket – there'll be a container with some aspirin in it. Take out a tablet and examine it for a moment.

It's a pretty innocuous-looking thing, isn't it? Just an ordinary little white pill. You've seen hundreds of them before and no doubt you'll see hundreds of them again. It's nothing special.

Look again and consider this. What you're holding is one of the most amazing creations in medical history, a drug so astonishingly versatile that it can relieve your headache, ease your aching limbs, lower your temperature and treat some of the deadliest human diseases. There's now evidence to show that aspirin might prevent heart attacks, strokes, deep vein thrombosis, bowel, lung and breast cancer, cataracts, migraine, infertility, herpes, Alzheimer's disease, and much else. The list is growing every year – which might go some way towards explaining why over 25,000 scientific papers have been written about aspirin and why an estimated one trillion little white pills, just like yours, have been consumed since it first came into being. [p. 1]

And it's been recognized from the earliest times that aspirin—and the similar chemical forms that preceded it—had some pretty amazing properties. Some of the claims in times past have sounded more than outlandish, but the things that aspirin can actually do are nevertheless pretty amazing, even if it's poorly understood how it all works in the human body. In the face of all that's outlandish, the author does manage to maintain a credibly scientific perspective.

The precursor of aspirin, salicylic acid, had been known for some time, but it tended to be too harsh on the stomach to use to good effect. The solution to that problem came about when Felix Hoffman was hired by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer in 1894 – or Farbenfabriken vormals Friedrich Bayer & Company, as it was known at the time.

[quoting from the laboratory journal of Felix Hoffman, 10 August 1897] When salicylic acid (100.0 parts) is heated with acetic anhydride (150.0) parts) for 3 hours under reflux, the salicylic acid is quantitatively acetylated. After distilling off the acetic acid one obtains the above in the form of needles, which, when crystallized from benzene, melt at 136 degrees (value in the literature is 118 degrees). In contrast [with] the literature reports, my acetyl product no longer gives a reaction with ferric chloride, which readily distinguished it from salicylic acid. By its physical properties, e.g. its sour taste without being corrosive, the acetylsalicylic acid differs favourably from salicylic acid, and is now being tested in this respect for its usefulness. [p. 70]

Along with the story of the chemical, and the story of the synthesis of the more easily tolerated acetylsalicylic acid form, there's also the business aspects, and that's a story in itself involving the worlds' largest companies, international patent litigation, underhanded dealings, secret deals, and Nazis. It makes for quite a cloak-and-dagger story.

Even what to call the stuff and the various names of various forms is an interesting tale.

On 23 January 1899, a memo circulated through Bayer's senior management addressing the thorny issue of what the new product should be called. Round robins of this sort were common and allowed everyone to have their say on a range of proposals. Because salicylic acid (as Karl Lowig had found out many years earlier) could be obtained from the meadowsweet plant, the document contained the suggestion that an abbreviation of the plant's Latin genus, Spiraea, should be put at the heart of the new brand name. The letter 'a' could be added at the front to acknowledge acetylation, and the letters 'in' could be tacked on to the end to make it easier to say – as was customary with many medicines of that time. It was noted that there was a drawback to this proposal because it might be suggestive of the word 'aspiration', which wouldn't have been an appropriate metaphor. An alternative could be the name 'euspirin'. When it came to him, Arthur Eichengrün, whose idea the final name probably was, wrote: "I am in favour of Aspirin because "Eu" is generally used for improved taste and ordour.' Carl Duisberg, Felix Hoffman and Heinrich Dreser all signed without comment. [p. 73]

Overall, it was a worthwhile book to have read.

-- Notes by JNS