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 from Spirsäure, and added -in as a typical drug name ending to make it easy to say. In the final round of naming proposals that circulated through Bayer, it came down to "Aspirin" and "Euspirin"; "Aspirin", they feared, might remind customers of aspiration, but Arthur Eichengrün argued that "Eu"- (meaning "good") was inappropriate because it usually indicated an improvement over an earlier version of a similar drug. Since the substance itself was already known, Bayer intended to use the new name to establish their drug as something new; in January 1899 they settled on "Aspirin". Under Carl Duisberg's leadership, Bayer