History of aspirin mid-eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century pharmacists were experimenting with and prescribing a variety of chemicals related to salicylic acid, the active component of willow extract. In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated acetyl chloride with sodium salicylate 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.
Tetrolic acid (water, ethanol) and may be recrystallized from non polar solvents (such as heptane, toluene). The compound is a white crystalline solid which can exist in two polymorphous crystalline forms. The proton nuclear magnetic resonance (H-NMR) spectrum in deuterated dimethyl sulfoxide shows a characteristic singlet peak at 1.99 ppm corresponding to the -CH protons. Tetrolic acid Tetrolic acid (2-butynoic acid) is a short-chain unsaturated carboxylic acid, described by the formula CH-C≡C-COH. Salts and esters of tetrolic acid are known as tetrolates. The first reported synthesis of tetrolic acid is believed to be by German chemist Johann Georg Anton Geuther in 1871