What? Aspirin and heroin are actually "brothers"

More than 100 years ago, aspirin was invented, and just two weeks later, heroin came into the world, both by the hand of one man.

One is the world-saving spiritual pearl, and the other is the life-destroying magic pill. It is rumored that the spiritual pearl was almost forgotten in the corner because of the advent of the magic pill. This scene is quite dramatic.

In fact, there are many such dramatic moments in the life of aspirin, including patent disputes, commercial wars, the two world wars, and so on.

When it comes to our hands today, it is such an ordinary small pill. Who would have thought that the world consumes 150 billion aspirin tablets every year, which means that you and I would take nearly 20 tablets a year.

All the ordinary little things around us deserve to be seen. Today I want to tell you its story.

Origin: The Taste of Willow

In ancient times, people had no medicine to take when facing pain, and their most common painkiller was alcohol. For example, before the Jews circumcised their babies, they would feed them a teaspoon of wine with sugar.

In ancient civilizations, there are also legends that willow trees can relieve pain.

In the 5th century BC, when Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine" in ancient Greece, was delivering a baby for a village woman, the woman cried out in pain. Someone nearby took a handful of willow bark and put it in her mouth. Soon the pain went away.

Hippocrates recorded this discovery, and word of its efficacy slowly spread around the world, with willow bark becoming a common medicine throughout the civilized world.

It only takes one fist to destroy a civilization. The world was unstable, full of force and brutality. Many medical treasures were cut off.

The willow tree can return to people’s attention due to an “idol drama plot” in which an apple hit Newton.

Around 1757, Reverend Edward Stone was strolling on the land he had bought and admiring the fish pond he had contracted. For some reason, he suddenly peeled a piece of willow bark and put it in his mouth.

This time, I tasted a familiar flavor.

Isn’t this bitter taste exactly the same as the medicine prescribed by doctors for treating colds and fevers!

He made willow bark into powder and tested it on patients with cold and fever, and the effect was very good.

After five years of experiments, he wrote a letter to the President of the Royal Society of London and published his research results in the Journal of Natural Science. Britain began to use willow bark to replace expensive medicinal materials.

It’s not a good idea to just chew on the bark of a tree. In the 19th century, scientists began to wonder what was inside the bark of a willow tree.

In the initial extraction process, no less than 7 scientists made contributions. They not only extracted salicylic acid, but also got rid of the dilemma of peeling tree bark and found spirea, which also contains salicylic acid.

Later, when aspirin was named, part of the name of meadowsweet was used.

Unfortunately, this result was not taken seriously by people at that time, because taking salicylic acid would make patients feel uncomfortable in their mouth, throat and stomach, and no one was willing to touch it.

In 1853, French chemist Charles Gerard discovered the reason why salicylic acid makes people feel uncomfortable, and extracted acetylsalicylic acid (the prototype of aspirin) of very low purity.

He was the first person to truly discover this thing, but because the process was too complicated, he gave up and stopped before success.

Birth of the Spiritual Pearl

The camera turns to Germany. In the 19th century, Germany had the best-trained team of scientists in Europe, and chemistry was a key subject.

Bayer, the company most closely associated with aspirin, was born here. However, it was originally a dye company and had mediocre development in the first few decades.

It wasn't until Carl Duisberg took over the company that they got any closer to aspirin.

Xiao Ka is an interesting person. When he was young, his father wanted him to take over the stable workshop at home as soon as possible, but he was very interested in chemistry. Such disputes usually have only two results, all depending on his mother's reaction.

So, behind every successful man there is a mother who fully supports him.

After a fierce dispute, Xiaoka got the opportunity to continue his studies and obtained a doctorate degree at the age of 20 at an astonishing speed. However, he still couldn't find a job, and after returning from the military service for one year, he still couldn't find one.

I guess at this time his father would say to him, see, what's the point of reading so many books, you might as well come back and take over the business.

The young man returned home, but did not give up writing job application letters, and finally got a reply from Bayer. On his 23rd birthday in 1884, he got a formal job and a girlfriend, the boss's niece, and they got married a few years later.

When Carl took over the company in 1890, he immediately spent a large amount of money to set up a pharmaceutical department, equipped it with a laboratory building, and devoted himself to the production of pharmaceuticals.

The Pharmaceutical Department had the Drug Research Division, headed by Arthur Eichengrün (Ai Ai), and the Pharmacology Division, headed by Heinrich Dreser (De De). Together with Felix Hoffmann (Hoffmann), a researcher at the Drug Research Division, the advent of aspirin was complete.

Many records, including the statement of Bayer, all confirm that aspirin was the result of Huo Huo alone, and the origin of the story is a very touching story.

To relieve my father's severe rheumatism and prevent him from suffering from stomach discomfort caused by taking sodium salicylate.

Talent + good qualities, such a story is perfect for spreading everywhere.

But the birth of aspirin is probably not that simple, there is another version.

As the director of the Drug Research Department, Ai Ai decided to find a drug with the same efficacy as salicylic acid but without the side effects, and assigned the task to Huo Huo.

Huo Huo conducted repeated experiments in the laboratory and finally obtained pure acetylsalicylic acid. Ai Ai was very satisfied.

However, Dede objected. He believed that salicylic acid would cause heart failure, and acetylsalicylic acid would have the same defect. However, this incident inspired him to let Huo Huo do another task.

Two weeks later, the magic pill heroin was launched. Heroin was named heroin because all the test subjects felt as if they could move mountains and conquer the world after taking it, so it became associated with hero.

Dede was very satisfied with the result and launched it as a powerful cough suppressant, believing that it could treat crying newborns, colds, influenza, joint pains, and even be made into a daily refreshing drink.

The magic pill was too dazzling, and the results of the spirit pearl were obviously ignored. Only Ai Ai was still thinking about it. He conducted his own experiments and asked many doctor friends for help. He got very good feedback and let the whole company know about the existence of the spirit pearl.

Accordingly, acetylsalicylic acid also had its own name, Aspirin. The first letter A of "acetyl" and the first few letters of spiraea were selected, and the suffix in was added. It was put into production in July 1899.

The magic pill and the spirit bead grow up, and the secret will eventually be exposed. In 1913, the addictiveness of heroin was exposed, and five years later it was listed as a banned drug in many parts of the world. Aspirin has come to this day.

Ai Ai is Lingzhu's mentor. He has a good temper, is generous, smart, handsome, and is Bayer's invention champion. His only shortcoming may be his philandering (his third wife is the nanny who takes care of his six children).

Unfortunately, his second half of life was miserable and he almost died in the gas chamber. I will talk about this later.

Debut and Attribution Controversy

Xiaoka did not forget one thing that businessmen must do, which is to apply for a patent. Only by taking possession of it first can you sit back and make money without any worries.

In Germany and most other countries, acetylsalicylic acid was considered to have been discovered by others several years ago, so it could not be patented. Only the United States and the United Kingdom could approve it. These were two big pieces of fat meat, so Bayer was happy to go.

In 1898 and 1900, Bayer obtained protected patents for the preparation of acetylsalicylic acid in the UK and the US respectively. The approval documents of these two patent applications both recognized that Bayer had a preparation process that was different from that discovered by previous researchers.

It is this phrase "different from what has been discovered by predecessors" that has laid the seeds of disaster for Bayer's patent road, which could explode at any time.

The launch of a miracle drug should have been accompanied by a lot of fanfare, but aspirin's debut was very low-key. Bayer sent it to various hospitals, asking the doctors and hospitals that received it to try it out.

There is a reason for being so low-key. At that time, the drugs being advertised were all fake drugs, which were despised by the medical community. Aspirin, a newcomer with a lot of expectations, cannot go in and ruin its image. A low-key entry is the best choice.

As expected, in the three years after the aspirin was sent out, about 160 scientific papers appeared that praised aspirin positively, and people picked it enthusiastically: My idol can do everything, and it really works hard!

This recognition far exceeds that of those who produce and market aspirin.

Xiao Ka knows very well that the real success will be to make people only know aspirin and not acetylsalicylic acid.

At this time, many companies that produce and sell acetylsalicylic acid have been frantically taking advantage of the market in countries where they do not have patents, so Bayer must speed up.

On May 2, 1905, one of the most heated debates in the history of medical legislation regarding intellectual property protection clauses began.

The plaintiff was Bayer and the defendant was Hayden Chemicals, a major European producer of salicylic acid. The cause of the case was that the defendant exported acetylsalicylic acid to the UK, and the plaintiff felt offended.

The event brought together leading experts in the emerging field of pharmaceutical chemistry from all over Europe, as well as many big names in the legal profession, and was presided over by the most experienced judge of the Chancery Court (one of the three high courts in the UK).

The Chief Justice brought a basic chemistry textbook with him as a reference in case he got confused on the spot.

The defendant was very straightforward and admitted directly: Yes, we exported to the UK, but you were not the first to discover acetylsalicylic acid. Your patent was obtained by fraud. It was obtained by fraud!

The plaintiff responded: Many people have indeed been able to produce acetylsalicylic acid before, but only my family, Huo Huo, has obtained the pure product. Pure product!

The debate lasted for 8 days before it ended.

After a two-month stay, the chief justice ruled that Bayer's patent application was "formed by accident, error, or constructed with an ulterior motive for the sole purpose of causing the greatest possible confusion."

The plaintiff lost the case, and from then on, all manufacturers in the UK could produce and sell acetylsalicylic acid.

Commentators have commented on the lawsuit:

All who draw the sword will die by the sword.

In fact, this judgment has another meaning, reflecting people's concerns about the German chemical industry at that time.

In the deteriorating international relations, Germany, an industrial top student, is particularly conspicuous, and all its achievements go beyond the scope of business.

Even though he was poured cold water, Xiao Ka would not give up easily. He wanted to dominate the market with the name "Aspirin".

Although he lost the case in the UK, he set up a subsidiary, retained the brand ownership of aspirin, and advertised it heavily.

Doctors in London and Manchester are accustomed to writing the complex "acetylsalicylic acid" as "aspirin" when prescribing medicine to patients.

The pace in the U.S. couldn't be stopped. Bayer's salesmen traveled all over the country, knocking on doctors' doors and giving them free pills and headlines praising aspirin.

Because it was profitable, a large number of smugglers began to get involved, resulting in illegal production accounting for nearly half of sales. Bayer began to make its own tablets and marked them with the "Bayer Cross".

Aspirin could have lived a peaceful life like this, but God felt that it had not experienced enough.

Entanglement World War

In 1914, World War I broke out. At the time, German industry was far ahead of other countries, and war meant a halt to trade.

Britain lost the import support for many drugs, including aspirin, so it simply gave up and said that "aspirin" was just a name. In 1915, The Lancet published a statement encouraging British manufacturers to produce it.

I'm probably just short of posting a message on WeChat Moments saying: Go and produce aspirin for me! Waiting online, urgent!!!

Unfortunately, most British companies have not yet mastered the technology, and this decision has led to the UK market being flooded with aspirin of varying quality.

A British military doctor wrote to his colleagues: "(These aspirins) are like broken pieces of chalk, very difficult to swallow. The soldiers refused to eat them no matter what."

On the other hand, although the United States only wanted to be a bystander, Britain disagreed and reached out to the Atlantic Ocean, cutting off trade between the United States and Germany with a "swish".

Everything can be discussed in person, but since the United States and Germany cannot meet, their friendship has faded.

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.

It was in this year that Bayer's patent in the United States expired. Several American chemical companies were already ready, including the famous Monsanto agricultural chemical company.

(Interlude: In June 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto and became its sole shareholder.)

Germany was defeated in World War I, and aspirin seemed to slip from Bayer's hands.

At this time, influenza hit. In 1918, the famous "Spanish flu" broke out, killing five times more people than during the entire First World War.

The American Public Health Association issued a series of recommendations, urging people to avoid all unnecessary public gatherings, close schools, military camps, stock markets, banks, and shops, and stop running trains, trams, and buses.

Some cities have regulations requiring people to wear masks when going out on the streets.

In the end, the medical community still used aspirin, the most effective method of all.

Among those who contracted the flu and survived was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the 32nd President of the United States).

In the eyes of many survivors, aspirin is a miracle drug and a ray of light in the darkness.

From 1918 to 1920, the production and sales of aspirin more than doubled. Many manufacturers have set their sights on it and are ready to make a fortune.

A world entering a peaceful era is a world of consumption, and heroes are the best advertisements.

After World War I, different countries formulated different trademark laws and trade regulations, forming a very complex system, and many "aspirins" appeared in the world.

In pharmacies of all sizes in the United States alone, there are hundreds of different brands, resulting in the most fierce commercial war in modern history.

Another interesting thing: a group calling themselves the "Aspirin Gang" broke into the warehouse and stole $92,000 worth of Bayer aspirin (more than 1 million tablets).

People began to believe that it was a must-have in every household.

In 1930, some people said it was the "Age of Aspirin."

What a glorious moment.

Bayer erected a lighted model of an aspirin tablet in front of its factory, 236 feet in diameter and with the "Bayer Cross" logo on it.

When the lights are on, people several kilometers away along the Rhine can see them.

For Kahn, aspirin is his cherished treasure that has made his life successful, but he also has a wish, which is to achieve the integration of German industry.

The trauma caused by World War I to Germany was enough to make everyone realize that only by uniting together can we become stronger and not be bullied.

Germany's six largest chemical companies and shareholders decided to join forces to form a powerful organization - IG Farben.

As Carvalho wished, IG Farben became a giant unprecedented in the global chemical industry.

The strong either contribute to the world or destroy it. Not long after the Bayer sign was lit up, IG Farben was targeted by the German Nazi Party and dragged aboard, becoming a powerful financial pillar behind the atrocities, with total aid reaching around 80 million marks.

On March 19, 1935, Xiaoka died.

The British newspaper The Times published an obituary saying, "...he is the most efficient and productive entrepreneur the world has ever seen."

All his wishes were fulfilled before his death. Closing his eyes at this moment may be the last gift God gave him.

In the mid-1930s, the Nazi black cross symbol appeared on all aspirin advertisements in South America. The spirit pearl was wrapped in a dark aura and transmitted to all places.

What’s even more ironic is that Ai Ai, who once made contributions to aspirin, was imprisoned in a concentration camp. On the aspirin inventor’s sign in the museum, only Huo Huo and De De’s names are written.

Jews were not allowed to play any role in German economic activities.

When the Russian army broke through the concentration camp where Ai Ai was located, there were only a few weeks left before the gas chamber was built, and life and death were only a matter of a moment.

On the 50th anniversary of the advent of aspirin, Ai Ai, who had been struggling to get his name back, died. Until that day, he had never received any response from the world.

After the end of World War II, IG Farben was dissolved and Bayer returned to the research and production of drugs. Aspirin is still their most successful and profitable product.

Continuation: Its story has not stopped

Aspirin, which has survived two world wars, may have finally settled down. But there is no monopoly in this world, whether it is a country, a person, or a medicine.

The emergence of easily soluble aspirin and new drugs such as Tylenol, paracetamol, and ibuprofen have severely impacted aspirin and taken away its sales throne.

Aspirin, which has lost its glory, is in danger of being buried. If it wants to make a comeback, it can only keep asking itself, who am I?

For more than half a century, people have been circling around its medicinal effects, only caring about what diseases it can cure, but no one cares whether it is happy or not and why it can cure diseases. Scientists began to think about this issue.

When the role of aspirin in the human body was revealed, people unexpectedly discovered that it not only relieves pain and fever, but is also a good medicine for treating cardiovascular disease. This disease, which has become increasingly serious with the advent of the new century, is deeply troubling people.

In 1985, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services held up a bottle of aspirin at a press conference and told media representatives from around the world:

One aspirin a day - good news for patients with myocardial infarction.

Today, its potential has been further explored. It can be used to treat diseases such as athlete's foot, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, etc. More clinical trials are needed to prove its effectiveness.

In agriculture, it also helps increase crop yields and keep flowers fresh.

It's not easy for this little pill to get to where it is today after all the twists and turns.

The "China Cardiovascular Disease Report 2018" estimates that the current number of people suffering from cardiovascular disease in my country is 290 million, accounting for 20% of the total population, and the mortality rate ranks first among all diseases.

As one of the effective drugs, aspirin has been subjected to various myths or doubts, and now needs to be understood and used more correctly.

The story of aspirin continues; it turns 123 this year.

The process of scientific research is mostly boring, but I still want to tell you the story about it. Many names and R&D processes have been deleted, and I want to apologize for these cuts. Every step forward deserves our respect.

As the book "The Legend of Aspirin" says at the end, there are countless people who should be grateful for its invention, and the number of such people will continue to increase.

It's not just aspirin, it's the name of everyone who should not be forgotten.

This tiny pill is a witness to hundreds of years of ups and downs in history, including wars, influenza, and the separation and reunion of the world. In the torrent of history, it is small yet powerful, just like each of us who is in history.

Every testimony is a gift to the future.

Note: In 2019, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) stated that routine use of low-dose aspirin (81 mg) is not recommended for people over 70 years old who do not have symptoms of heart disease or stroke; it is also not recommended for people of any age who have diseases that increase the risk of bleeding (such as peptic ulcers, gastric bleeding).

References:

[1] The Aspirin Legend. (UK) Jeffreys. Bao Yongning/ Translated by Wang Hui. Published by Sanlian Bookstore

[2] The Truth About Medicine: Don’t Let Drugs Harm You. Deruen Bucci. Translated by Sun Hong and Ma Liangjuan. Published by New World Press

[3] The first 3500 years of aspirin history from its roots – A concise summary[J]. Maria Rosa Montinari,Sergio Minelli,Raffaele De Caterina.Vascular Pharmacology. 2018

[4] Summary of “China Cardiovascular Disease Report 2018”, Chinese Circulation Journal, March, 2019, Vol. 34 No.3 (Serial No. 249)