Aspirin for its health effects for at least 2,400 years. In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated the medicine sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to produce acetylsalicylic acid for the first time. For the next fifty years, other chemists established the chemical structure and came up with more efficient methods to make it. In 1897, scientists at the Bayer company began studying acetylsalicylic acid as a less-irritating replacement medication for common salicylate medicines. By 1899, Bayer had named it "Aspirin" and sold it around the world. Aspirin's popularity grew over the first half of the twentieth century leading to competition between
Homogentisic acid Homogentisic acid Homogentisic acid (2,5-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid) is a phenolic acid usually found in "Arbutus unedo" (strawberry-tree) honey. It is also present in the bacterial plant pathogen "Xanthomonas campestris pv. phaseoli" as well as in the yeast "Yarrowia lipolytica" where it is associated with the production of brown pigments. It is oxidatively dimerised to form hipposudoric acid, one of the main constituents of the 'blood sweat' of hippopotamuses. It is less commonly known as melanic acid, the name chosen by William Prout. Accumulation of excess homogentisic acid and its oxide, named alkapton, is a result of the failure of the enzyme