History of aspirin other studies from the 1960s to the 1980s established aspirin's efficacy as an anti-clotting agent that reduces the risk of clotting diseases. Aspirin sales revived considerably in the last decades of the twentieth century, and remain strong in the twenty-first with widespread use as a preventive treatment for heart attacks and strokes. Medicines derived from willow trees and other salicylate-rich plants have been part of pharmacopoeias at least dating back to ancient Sumer. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text from ca. 1543 BCE, mentions use of willow and myrtle (another salicylate-rich plant) to treat fever and pain. Willow bark
Bark beater Bark beater In many traditional cultures, bark beaters were tools used to pound tree bark, to make the bark softer for the processing of barkcloth, which is used for making paper, and clothing. This tool has many different variations that are seen in indigenous cultures worldwide, yet all for a similar purpose. “In Mesoamerica, the earliest proven bark beaters are from the Maya area and its periphery, particularly the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala and El Salvador, where they appear some 2,500 years ago.” Both forms of bark beaters (club-shaped, and racquet type) were also found in the islands of