Bayer "heroin" for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910. Bayer also introduced phenobarbital; prontosil, the first widely used antibiotic and the subject of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine; the antibiotic Cipro (ciprofloxacin); and Yaz (drospirenone) birth control pills. In 1925 Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben, the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company. The Allied Control Council seized IG Farben after World War II, because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, which included using slave
Analgesic nephropathy between the 1960s and 1980s. As the use of phenacetin declined, so too did the prevalence of analgesic nephropathy as a cause of end-stage kidney disease. Data from Switzerland, for example, demonstrated a decline in the prevalence of analgesic nephropathy among people with end-stage kidney disease, from 28% in 1981 to 12% in 1990. An autopsy study performed in Switzerland suggested that the prevalence of analgesic nephropathy in the general population has likewise decreased; the prevalence was 3% in 1980 and 0.2% in 2000. While these data demonstrate that analgesic nephropathy has been all but eliminated in some regions, in