History of aspirin Peto convinced the U.S. FDA and much of the medical community that the aspirin studies, in aggregate, showed aspirin's effectiveness with relative certainty. By the end of the 1980s, aspirin was widely used as a preventive drug for heart attacks and had regained its former position as the top-selling analgesic in the U.S. History of aspirin The history of aspirin (IUPAC name acetylsalicylic acid ) begins with its synthesis and manufacture in 1899. Before that, salicylic acid had been used medicinally since antiquity. Medicines made from willow and other salicylate-rich plants appear in clay tablets from ancient Sumer as well
History of aspirin the term "aspirin". The Australian market was taken over by "Aspro", after the makers of Nicholas-Aspirin lost a short-lived exclusive right to the "aspirin" name there. In the United States, Bayer was still under German control—though the war disrupted the links between the American Bayer plant and the German Bayer headquarters—but phenol shortage threatened to reduce aspirin production to a trickle, and imports across the Atlantic Ocean were blocked by the Royal Navy. To secure phenol for aspirin production, and at the same time indirectly aid the German war effort, German agents in the United States orchestrated what became known