You do not have to believe in Adam and Eve to recognize the significance of an apple. The old saying ‘‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’’ has been changed to ‘‘an aspirin a day keeps the doctor away’’ (see Fig. 1).
A. Hippocrates, 400 BC and Beyond
As early as BC 350, Hippocrates tried to relieve the pain of his patients by asking them to chew willow bark, a natural substance which contains salicylic acid. In 1763, Reverend Stone of Chipping Norton, England, showed the benefit of willow bark for individuals with ague and fever. Today pain can be relieved by aspirin, which also contains salicylic acid.
B. Von Gerhardt, 1853
The use of salicylic acid, however, did not become common until 1853 when Von Gerhardt of Bayer developed aspirin and in 1899, Felix Hoffman, a Bayer chemist, used aspirin to treat his father’s rheumatism.
C. Lawerence Craven, 1953
The first clinical trial of aspirin in patients occurred from 1948 to 1956 when a general practitioner, Lawrence Craven, treated 1500 relatively healthy, overweight, seden¬tary men between the ages of 40 and 65. The result of the study reported in the Mississippi Valley Journal con¬cluded that one aspirin a day was sufficient, because none of Lawrence Craven’s 1500 patients experienced a heart attack over the five-year course of treatment. This small study, however, did not influence physicians to prescribe aspirin to patients for heart problems.

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