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The uncertain origins of aspirin

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Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#11

Post by ChocMontePy »

The author couldn't find a purported willow text in the ancient Egyptian Ebers papyrus that was quoted by John Mann, so he threw his hands in the air and moved on.

But Mann made a mistake. The book he was likely quoting from, 'Science and Secrets of Early Medicine' by Jurgen Thorwald (which, to be fair, is not referenced at all by Mann) does mention the Ebers papyrus in the paragraph after the quote (on pp. 57-8 for people playing along at home) but the willow quote itself in the paragraph before turns out to be from the Edwin Smith Papyrus, Case 41 to be exact. It can be read here:

https://archive.org/details/oip3_20220624/page/374/

So that quoted willow did exist in ancient Egypt.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#12

Post by pierrec »

The only urban legend I heard about the origins of aspirin is that it was originally snorted, hence the name.

Allow me to clarify: in french, "aspire in" could mean "snort it in", though in a goofy brand-name-ified sort of way. This is something that my french high school chemistry teacher served the entire class in the most serious way possible.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#13

Post by didibus »

As an aside, this is an example of why I always take history with a grain of salt. All historical knowledge is akin to LLM, most of it is hallucinated. The actual evidence is often meeger, contested, incomplete, hearsay, hard to understand the intent and meaning, and so on.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#14

Post by giardini »

ggm wrote: post #2

I certainly bought the ancient remedy story. Getting wised up doesn't diminish the amazing work done with willow, and chinchona bark. Obrien writes of 'jesuits bark' a lot in his naval fiction, makes me wonder now how much the Georgian british navy did actually use this kind of thing for fever reduction. On the whole, I'm going to give blowing willow smoke up my Anus a miss, if that's ok.

ggm sez >"I'm going to give blowing willow smoke up my Anus a miss, if that's ok. "

Speaking of which, here lie several drawings of people blowing smoke up a miss's ass FWIW:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/blowing-smoke-up-your-ass

While more hygienic than mouth-to-mouth resuscitation + CPR, I suspect legal complications would render the technique non-preferred today.

BTW the lady depicted in the first drawing has few, if any, clothing undergarments for a married woman of the year 1746. Indeed for any woman, any year.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#15

Post by yorwba »

ChocMontePy wrote: post #11

The author couldn't find a purported willow text in the ancient Egyptian Ebers papyrus that was quoted by John Mann, so he threw his hands in the air and moved on. But Mann made a mistake. The book he was likely quoting from, 'Science and Secrets of Early Medicine' by Jurgen Thorwald (which, to be fair, is not referenced at all by Mann) does mention the Ebers papyrus in the paragraph after the quote (on pp. 57-8 for…

The commentary on the translation also illustrates the pitfalls of learning about ancient medicine from medical treatises of the time, discussing the word ḏrḏ: "The rendering “leaves” is not wholly certain; the word might possibly mean “bark” (cortex), and indeed in the case of willow, the bark is medicinally more efficacious than the leaves."

If you use modern medical knowledge to inform the translation (and interpret the phrase "the feathers of birds and the ḏrḏr.w of trees" elsewhere as referring to how trees are covered in bark just as birds are covered in feathers; see commentary on this dictionary entry: https://tla.digital/lemma/185150 ) you potentially get a more accurate translation, but you cannot treat it as independent evidence for the use of willow bark as opposed to willow leaves. Hopefully at least the identity of the willow tree has been established in a less circular manner.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#16

Post by dfawcus »

One quibble I have with the piece is the quotes.

        There is a bark of an Englifh tree, which I have found by experience to be a powerful aftringent, and very efficacious in curing aguifh [agues] and intermitting diforders.


        My curiofity prompted me to look into the difpenfatories and books of botany, and examine what they faid concerning it; but there it exifted only by name. I could not find, that it hath, or ever had, any place in pharmacy, or any fuch qualities, as I fufpected afcribed to it by the botanifts.
If (as it appears) the author was unable to type in a long-S, he could at least have used a normal one, making the text more readable.

i.e. Englifh => English; aftringent => astringent; aguifh => aguish; diforders => disorders; curiofity => curiosity; difpenfatories => dispensatories; faid => said; exifted => existed; fuch => such; fufpected afcribed => suspected ascribed; botanifts => botanists

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#17

Post by Izkata »

pierrec wrote: post #12

The only urban legend I heard about the origins of aspirin is that it was originally snorted, hence the name. Allow me to clarify: in french, "aspire in" could mean "snort it in", though in a goofy brand-name-ified sort of way. This is something that my french high school chemistry teacher served the entire class in the most serious way possible.

"Aspirate" is also an English word which just means to breath something in. Sounds medical (so not generally used) but not in an awkward brand-namey way.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#18

Post by kazinator »

There is no uncertainty about the origin of Aspirin whatosever.

A young chemist named Felix Hoffman synthesized it in 1897. The name aspirin was settled upon in January 1899, between the two finalists euspirin and aspirin.

All use of salycilates in natural form until then was quackery and not the origin of the thing called Aspirin.

Salycilates that are not ASA are not aspirin.

Re: The uncertain origins of aspirin

#19

Post by kazinator »

derbOac wrote: post #3

This was a great read but I took issue with this a bit: "When researchers gave people willow bark extract corresponding to 240 mg of salicin, then looked at how much salicylic acid was present in their blood over time, it was the equivalent of taking 87 mg of aspirin (300 mg to 600 mg is recommended per dose, with up to 3600 mg allowed per day). Notably, 240 mg of salicin is the recommended daily dose specified by th…

Aspirin isn't salicylic acid; they are close relatives. Aspirin replaces an -OH group in salicylic acid with a -COOCH3 acetyl ester.

Someone chewing on or otherwise consuming willow bark extracts isn't taking aspirin.

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