Public domain "acetylsalicylic acid" (2-acetoxybenzoic acid) is better known as "aspirin" in the United States—a generic term. In Canada, however, "Aspirin", with an uppercase A, is still a trademark of the German company Bayer, while aspirin, with a lowercase "a", is not. Bayer lost the trademark in the United States, the UK and France after World War I, as part of the Treaty of Versailles. So many copycat products entered the marketplace during the war that it was deemed generic just three years later. Bayer also lost the trademark in the same jurisdictions for "Heroin" which it trademarked a year before it
4-Aminosalicylic acid enzymatic activity. PAS was first synthesized by Seidel and Bittner in 1902. It was rediscovered by the Swedish chemist Jörgen Lehmann upon the report that the tuberculosis bacterium avidly metabolized salicylic acid. Lehmann first tried PAS as an oral TB therapy late in 1944. The first patient made a dramatic recovery. The drug proved better than streptomycin, which had nerve toxicity and to which TB could easily develop resistance. In the 1948, researchers at Britain's Medical Research Council demonstrated that combined treatment with streptomycin and PAS was superior to either drug alone, and established the principle of combination therapy for