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
Mother of the Forest inserted rods into the holes to support the weight of the scaffolding and the workers while the bark was sawed off. Over 90 days, 60 tons of bark was removed in high and wide sections up to the height of . The bark was thick at the base, and on average . Gale sent samples of the tree to foresters in the east where it was discovered to be 2,520 years old. The removed sections of the bark were shipped by sea around Cape Horn to New York, where they were reassembled in 1855 in the shape of the tree