History of Aspirin - Early History of Salicylates

Early History of Salicylates

Medicines derived from willow trees and other salicylate-rich plants have been part of pharmacopoeias at least dating back to ancient Sumer. A stone tablet of medical text from the Third Dynasty of Ur, dated ca. 2000 BC, lists willow among other plant- and animal-based remedies; however, no indications are given. The earliest specific reference to willow and myrtle (another salicylate-rich plant) being used for conditions that would likely be affected by their analgesic, anti-pyretic, and anti-inflammatory properties comes from the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text from ca. 1543 BC, likely a copy of a text from around the time of the Ur tablet.

Willow bark preparations became a standard part of the materia medica of Western medicine beginning at least with the Greek physician Hippocrates in the fifth century BC; he recommended it to ease the pain of child-bearing and to reduce fever. The Roman encyclopedist Celsus, in his De Medicina of ca. 30 AD, suggested willow leaf extract to treat the four signs of inflammation: redness, heat, swelling and pain. Willow treatments also appeared in Dioscorides's De Materia Medica, and Pliny the Elder's Natural History. By the time of Galen, willow was commonly used throughout the Roman and Arab worlds, as a small part of a large, growing botanical pharmacopoeia.