MCQ IN MEDICINE

Detailed explanation-1: -The story of the discovery of aspirin stretches back more than 3500 years to when bark from the willow tree was used as a pain reliever and antipyretic. It involves an Oxfordshire clergyman, scientists at a German dye manufacturer, a Nobel Prize-winning discovery and a series of pivotal clinical trials.

Detailed explanation-2: -Historians of medicine have traced its birth in 1897, but the fascinating history of aspirin actually dates back >3500 years, when willow bark was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by Sumerians and Egyptians, and then by great physicians from ancient Greece and Rome.

Detailed explanation-3: -Aspirin is prepared by chemical synthesis from salicylic acid, through acetylation with acetic anhydride. The molecular weight of aspirin is 180.16g/mol. It is odourless, colourless to white crystals or crystalline powder.

Detailed explanation-4: -In 1897, Felix Hoffman, a German chemist working for the Bayer company, was able to modify salicylic acid to create acetylsalicylic acid, which was named aspirin (Fig. 1).

Detailed explanation-5: -History of willow in medicine Bartram’s 1998 Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine is perhaps typical when it states, ‘in 1838 chemists identified salicylic acid in the bark of White Willow. After many years, it was synthesised as acetylsalicylic acid, now known as aspirin.