[HN Gopher] The uncertain origins of aspirin
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The uncertain origins of aspirin
Author : dearwell
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-12-16 23:08 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| ggm wrote:
| I certainly bought the ancient remedy story. Getting wised up
| doesn't diminish the amazing work done with willow, and chinchona
| bark. Obrien writes of 'jesuits bark' a lot in his naval fiction,
| makes me wonder now how much the Georgian british navy did
| actually use this kind of thing for fever reduction.
|
| On the whole, I'm going to give blowing willow smoke up my Anus a
| miss, if that's ok.
| giardini wrote:
| ggm sez _> "I'm going to give blowing willow smoke up my Anus a
| miss, if that's ok. "<_
|
| Speaking of which, here lie several drawings of people blowing
| smoke up a miss's ass FWIW:
|
| https://allthatsinteresting.com/blowing-smoke-up-your-ass
|
| While more hygienic than mouth-to-mouth resuscitation + CPR, I
| suspect legal complications would render the technique non-
| preferred today.
|
| BTW the lady depicted in the first drawing has few, if any,
| clothing undergarments for a married woman of the year 1746.
| Indeed for any woman, any year.
| derbOac wrote:
| This was a great read but I took issue with this a bit:
|
| "When researchers gave people willow bark extract corresponding
| to 240 mg of salicin, then looked at how much salicylic acid was
| present in their blood over time, it was the equivalent of taking
| 87 mg of aspirin (300 mg to 600 mg is recommended per dose, with
| up to 3600 mg allowed per day). Notably, 240 mg of salicin is the
| recommended daily dose specified by the European Scientific
| Cooperative on Phytotherapy...
|
| If... each cup of tea provided 240 mg salicin (possible with a
| good steeping and a high salicin content in the bark), then one
| would need to drink 41 cups of tea to get a full, therapeutic
| aspirin dose of 3600 mg."
|
| Wouldn't you only need around 4 cups to get a full dose? That
| seems not unreasonable to me. The 10L would be to get the maximum
| safe dose, which seems like a different thing.
|
| It's relevant because it's a primary argument the author uses to
| dismiss willow use in older times (even as they point to similar
| use later as eventually motivating the discovery of aspirin even
| later).
| bena wrote:
| Yeah, that is two different things.
|
| And 240mg is right under the lower end of the recommended dose.
|
| So, two cups?
|
| Or more likely, "drink this until you start to feel better".
| hx8 wrote:
| > Wouldn't you only need around 4 cups to get a full dose? That
| seems not unreasonable to me.
|
| This depends entirely on how bitter it is. There are certainly
| root bark teas you can brew that will induce vomiting before
| completing 4 cups.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You don't need 3600mg of aspirin for a therapeutic dose, more
| like 300mg
| margalabargala wrote:
| Yes, that is indeed the point being made in the comment you
| replied to.
| kazinator wrote:
| Aspirin isn't salicylic acid; they are close relatives. Aspirin
| replaces an -OH group in salicylic acid with a -COOCH3 acetyl
| ester.
|
| Someone chewing on or otherwise consuming willow bark extracts
| isn't taking aspirin.
| spzb wrote:
| "Even if you could push through the bitterness, it's unlikely
| you'd be able to stomach the bucketfuls of tea required to get
| enough salicin from willow bark (or similar plants) to ease your
| discomfort."
|
| So, rather than killing pain, they probably just stopped
| complaining about it to save them from having to drink any more
| bitter willow tea.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| > _When I searched through a translation of the papyrus, however,
| I saw no evidence of willow bark used similarly to aspirin. I did
| find a treatment for an "ear-that-discharges-foul-smelling-
| matter" that used "berry-of-the-willow"_
|
| These two sentences critically contradict one another, unless you
| assume the translations to be perfect (we know for sure they are
| not). It appears _very_ likely that they knew. The hypothesis
| that they didn 't know, then, appears to be incredibly unlikely
| and therefore disproven without significant evidence to the
| contrary.
|
| I think the article could have ended here, in the spirit of an
| honest science based approach to history. But it didn't.
|
| This is a science fiction article, presented as a real ground
| breaking contribution to a historical subject.
| ChocMontePy wrote:
| The author couldn't find a purported willow text in the ancient
| Egyptian Ebers papyrus that was quoted by John Mann, so he threw
| his hands in the air and moved on.
|
| But Mann made a mistake. The book he was likely quoting from,
| 'Science and Secrets of Early Medicine' by Jurgen Thorwald
| (which, to be fair, is not referenced at all by Mann) does
| mention the Ebers papyrus in the paragraph after the quote (on
| pp. 57-8 for people playing along at home) but the willow quote
| itself in the paragraph before turns out to be from the Edwin
| Smith Papyrus, Case 41 to be exact. It can be read here:
|
| https://archive.org/details/oip3_20220624/page/374/
|
| So that quoted willow did exist in ancient Egypt.
| yorwba wrote:
| The commentary on the translation also illustrates the pitfalls
| of learning about ancient medicine from medical treatises of
| the time, discussing the word _drd_ : "The rendering "leaves"
| is not wholly certain; the word might possibly mean "bark"
| (cortex), and indeed in the case of willow, the bark is
| medicinally more efficacious than the leaves."
|
| If you use modern medical knowledge to inform the translation
| (and interpret the phrase "the feathers of birds and the
| _drdr.w_ of trees " elsewhere as referring to how trees are
| covered in bark just as birds are covered in feathers; see
| commentary on this dictionary entry:
| https://tla.digital/lemma/185150 ) you potentially get a more
| accurate translation, but you cannot treat it as independent
| evidence for the use of willow bark as opposed to willow
| leaves. Hopefully at least the identity of the willow tree has
| been established in a less circular manner.
| pierrec wrote:
| The only urban legend I heard about the origins of aspirin is
| that it was originally snorted, hence the name.
|
| Allow me to clarify: in french, "aspire in" could mean "snort it
| in", though in a goofy brand-name-ified sort of way. This is
| something that my french high school chemistry teacher served the
| entire class in the most serious way possible.
| Izkata wrote:
| "Aspirate" is also an English word which just means to breath
| something in. Sounds medical (so not generally used) but not in
| an awkward brand-namey way.
| didibus wrote:
| As an aside, this is an example of why I always take history with
| a grain of salt. All historical knowledge is akin to LLM, most of
| it is hallucinated. The actual evidence is often meeger,
| contested, incomplete, hearsay, hard to understand the intent and
| meaning, and so on.
| dfawcus wrote:
| One quibble I have with the piece is the quotes.
| There is a bark of an Englifh tree, which I have found by
| experience to be a powerful aftringent, and very efficacious in
| curing aguifh [agues] and intermitting diforders.
| My curiofity prompted me to look into the difpenfatories and
| books of botany, and examine what they faid concerning it; but
| there it exifted only by name. I could not find, that it hath, or
| ever had, any place in pharmacy, or any fuch qualities, as I
| fufpected afcribed to it by the botanifts.
|
| If (as it appears) the author was unable to type in a long-S, he
| could at least have used a normal one, making the text more
| readable.
|
| i.e. Englifh => English; aftringent => astringent; aguifh =>
| aguish; diforders => disorders; curiofity => curiosity;
| difpenfatories => dispensatories; faid => said; exifted =>
| existed; fuch => such; fufpected afcribed => suspected ascribed;
| botanifts => botanists
| kazinator wrote:
| There is no uncertainty about the origin of Aspirin whatosever.
|
| A young chemist named Felix Hoffman synthesized it in 1897. The
| name aspirin was settled upon in January 1899, between the two
| finalists euspirin and aspirin.
|
| All use of salycilates in natural form until then was quackery
| and not the origin of the thing called Aspirin.
|
| Salycilates that are not ASA are not aspirin.
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