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Article: Aspirin: a new look at an old drug.
- Article from:
- FDA Consumer
- Article date:
- January 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In purses and backpacks, in briefcases and medicine chests the world over, millions of people keep close at hand a drug that has both a long past and a fascinating future. Its past reaches at least to the fifth century B.C., when Hippocrates used a bitter powder obtained from willow bark to ease aches and pains and reduce fever. Its future is being shaped today in laboratories and clinics where scientists are exploring some intriguing new uses for an interesting old drug.
The substance in willow bark that made ancient Greeks feel better, salicin, is the pharmacological ancestor of a family of drugs called salicylates, the best known of which is the world's most ...