Re: Who invented asprin.

Here is a quote from a paper by Ann Andermann of McGill University.

Still, it is not exactly clear how aspirin came to be. Many give the title of "discoverer of aspirin" to Felix Hoffmann, a chemist at Bayer whose father suffered from rheumatism. According to legend, Hoffmann's father was taking salicylic acid, already mass-produced, widely used, and highly profitable by the end of the 1870s, to treat his rheumatic condition. Unfortunately, the drug was terribly irritating to the stomach and was associated with other ill-effects: most notably, in addition to having an unpleasant, sometimes nauseating, taste, it was believed that salicylic acid disrupted digestion and had an enfeebling action on the heart. Therefore, the dutiful son took on the task of developing a less toxic replacement. However, acetylsalicylic acid (ASA)--the common chemical name of aspirin--may have already been produced by the French chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt in 1853, although he called his compound acetosalicylic anhydride, which was not necessarily the same as ASA. The compound was synthesized in a purer form by Johann Kraut in 1869. Indeed, acetylsalicylic acid was already being manufactured by the Chemische Fabrik von Heyden Company in 1897, although without a brand name. Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether Hoffmann truly developed a new chemical compound or even a novel method of producing a known one, which could then have been patented in Germany.