Aspirin also known as acetylsalicylic acid is a common analgesic.  The history of this drug goes back to the early Fifth Century B.C. with Hippocrates a Greek physician.  He used the bark of willows and extracted a powder from it to treat pain and reduce fever.

    In 1829, Salicin; the parent of the salicylate drug family was successfully isolated from willow bark.  Along with salicylic acid, sodium salicylate was crated in 1875 as a pain reliever.

    In 1897 a German chemist by the name of Felix Hoffman changed the face of medicine forever.  Felix worked for Bayer and he used the common sodium salicylate to relieve his fathers arthritis.  But at the time, Sodium salicylate was not used often because it was commonly known to irritate the stomach.  The irritation of the stomach was the case with Felix Hoffman's father, so Felix tried to crate an less acidic formula.  During his work, he ended up with the synthesisation of acetylsalicylic acid or ASA or Aspirin.  This soon became the main choice of pain killer for physicians all around the world.

    While Aspirin was being used all over the world scientists still never knew how the drug worked, until the 1970's.  John Vane and British Ph.D pharmacologist began investigating on aspirin.  Vane and his cohorts discovered that aspirin releases a hormone like substance named prostaglandin.  This chemical regulates certain body functions, such as blood vessel elasticity and changing the functions of blood platelets and because of that aspirin can influence blood clotting and ease inflammation.