In ancient times when people were in pain, they chew a leaves or bark of some trees to relieve their pain. In 400 B.C. the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates used on his patient some powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree to help heal, headache, pains and fever.
The willow contains substances called Salicin. Salicin is awhite bitter taste, a crystalline powdery glycoside. It obtained from the bark of a certain poplars and willows use as a reagent. IN 1853 a French chemist name Charles Frederick Von Gerhardt, realized the value of the Salicin as a drug. He wanted to produce salicin; Gerhardt neutralized salicylic acid by buffering it with sodium (sodium salicylate) and acetyl chlorine. Creating acetyl salicylic Gerhardt tested the substances on a few people. Bur he decide that chewing willow bark was better, then in the 1890 the German chemist Felix Hoffmann prepared a batch of synthetic type of salicin the same as the one that Gerhardt produced. Hoffman was trying to find a medicine to help his father who was suffering from arthritis. The formula worked so he convinced Bayer the drug company he was working to produced and market the new drug. Bayer called this a wonder drug aspirin.
The names come from the “A” in acetyl chloride, the “Spri” in spirited ulmaria. The plant that derived the salicylic acid form, and the “In” was familiar name ending for medicines. Today it is considered a wonder drug used not only to relieve aches and pain but the risk of heart attack and to speed the recovery of stroke.