Daniel, Happy Birthday (belated)

Daniel, while October 31st is technically your birthday, because you were born so late at night, around 11:45 pm, we begged and pleaded with the doctor to date your birth on Nov 1st so we could have a November baby.  That didn't work.

I've been up half the night thinking aboutwhat would be appropriate for your birthday and I decided to give you something I give you regularly:  headache medicine.  Though I usually stick to tylenol or ibuprofen, I now give you aspirin.

Someday you'll be taking 2nd year chemistry.  The class will be affectionately known as O-Chem, or Organic Chemistry, and during that class you will have a lab assignment to make aspirin.  The first thing you will learn is the chemical symbol:

Or, 

C₉H₈O₄

Aspirin has several names:

2-acetoxybenzoic acid 

2-(acetyloxy)benzoic acid

salicylic acid acetate

acetylsalicylic acid 

aspirin

Aspirin has a molecular weight of 180.15.  By comparison, the molecular weight of water is 18.0. That means many things, such as the aspirin molecule is much heavier than the water molecule. It also means that aspirin won't float.

The origins of the aspirin date back to about 400 BC, when Hippocrates prescribed an extract from the bark of the willow tree as a remedy for fever and pain. The extract contained salicylic acid, and today we know that many derivatives of this compound relieve pain and reduce fever. Acetylsalicylic acid was apparently first prepared by C. von Gerhardt in 1853, but it sat on the shelf unused and untested for almost 50 years.

Felix Hoffmann, a young chemist working for the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG, was looking for a new painkiller to treat his father's rheumatism. He prepared acetylsalicylic acid in 1897, and according to the literature, Henrich Dreser, head of Bayer laboratories, started its clinical use shortly thereafter. Bayer registered Aspirin trademark and began selling it in 1899.

Aspirin (like other nonstereoidal anti-inflammatory drugs, NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen and acetamidophen) relieves pain and soothes aching joints and muscles, but can also eat away the stomach lining and damage the kidneys. The beneficial effect of aspirin comes from its ability to irreversibly block an enzyme, called cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) that promotes inflammation, pain and fever. Unfortunately, it also inhibits COX-1, a related enzyme essential for the health of the stomach and kidneys.

Chemically, that means it works like this:

The Prostaglandins are good things.

Aspirin trivia:  In 1950, aspirin was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the best-selling pain reliever in history.  Aspirin is one of tthe most frequently used drugs of all times. The current annual production is equivalent to 100,000,000,000 500 gram tablets.

Happy birthday, Daniel.

Love, DAD