Aspirin to salicylic acid, the active component of willow extract. In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to produce acetylsalicylic acid for the first time; in the second half of the nineteenth century, other academic chemists established the compound's chemical structure and devised more efficient methods of synthesis. In 1897, scientists at the drug and dye firm Bayer began investigating acetylsalicylic acid as a less-irritating replacement for standard common salicylate medicines, and identified a new way to synthesize it. By 1899, Bayer had dubbed this drug Aspirin and was selling it around the world. The word
Fluoroacetic acid Fluoroacetic acid Fluoroacetic acid is a chemical compound with formula CHFCOOH. The sodium salt, sodium fluoroacetate, is used as a pesticide. It inhibits the aconitase step of the citric acid cycle. Fluoroacetate occurs naturally in at least 40 plants in Australia, Brazil, and Africa. It is one of only five known organic fluorine-containing natural products. It was first identified in "Dichapetalum cymosum", commonly known as gifblaar (Afrikaans) or poison leaf, by Marais in 1944. As early as 1904, colonists in Sierra Leone used extracts of "Chailletia toxicaria", which also contains fluoroacetic acid or its salts, to poison rats. Several native