Aspirin in the Prevention of Coronary Disease

The salutary effects of willow bark have been known to several cultures for centuries. Salicin, the active ingredient, is a bitter glycoside from which sodium salicylate was isolated in 1829 by Leroux, who demonstrated its antipyretic effects.¹ The pharmaceutical chemist Hoffman, while employed by the Bayer Company, later prepared acetylsalicylic acid, which was shown to have antiinflammatory and analgesic effects. It was introduced into clinical medicine at the turn of the century, under the name “aspirin.”¹ The inhibitory action of this compound on blood platelets was not discovered until the late 1960s,² and it has been little more than a.