Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: The Story of Aspirin Revisited

By Erika Mills ~

For centuries, people used willow bark to treat pain and fevers. However, it was not until the late 1800s that scientists developed an analog of the active ingredient in willow bark, creating aspirin, the essential medicine that is now part of everyday life. In the latter half of the 20th century, researchers discovered additional uses for the drug, including heart attack and stroke prevention and the treatment of inflammatory conditions, like rheumatoid arthritis.

Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: The Story of Aspirin Revisited, a new online exhibition from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), examines how modern organic chemistry and technology isolated, then synthesized nature’s properties into a medication now common worldwide. The exhibition, curated by historian and NLM librarian Anne Rothfeld, PhD, builds upon a display from an earlier period in NLM history.

For the National Library of Medicine, 1959 was a transformative year: the institution moved to a new building and adopted its current name. During this time, Marie Harvin, reference librarian, developed a display titled Acetylsalicylic Acid: The Story of Aspirin. Held at NLM in the winter of 1959, that display showcased NLM collection materials highlighting aspirin’s history from its ancient origins to the developments of the mid-20th century.

Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: The Story of Aspirin Revisited updates and brings the story to a global audience online and showcases newer items from the NLM collection alongside books from the original exhibition. In addition to works from the Middle Ages to the late 20th century, the online exhibition features a digital gallery of 18 items from NLM Digital Collections related to the history of aspirin and public health messaging, as well as links to NLM health information resources.

Here are some highlights from the new exhibition:

The earliest physicians of Western medical tradition showed willow tree bark’s medicinal properties. Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 BC) used the leaves to ease childbirth pains. Dioscorides (c. 40–c. 90 AD) treated colic, gout, and ear pains with the powder. Plinius (c. 23–79 AD) applied the bark as an analgesic, a pain reliever.

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During World War I and the preceding years, aspirin became an increasingly important therapeutic. Nurses dispensed aspirin in tablets to ailing military men, reducing aches and fevers, and allowing the body to strengthen its natural defenses. The French pharmaceutical company Usines du Rhône produced advertisements to promote their aspirin product. The ads used the visual trope of the hospital nurse to assure customers of aspirin’s effectiveness.

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British pharmacologist, John Robert Vane (1927–2004), and Swedish biochemists Sune K. Bergström (1916–2004) and Bengt I. Samuelsson (1934–) shared the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their breakthroughs in research on prostaglandins, hormone-like compounds in the body that aspirin inhibits to prevent blood clots. Today, aspirin is taken long term to prevent blood clots and stroke.

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For more of Take Two and Call Me in the Morning, visit the exhibition online. Explore other NLM exhibitions about topics in the social and cultural history of science and medicine, go to the Exhibition Program website.

Erika Mills is an exhibit specialist in the Exhibition Program, History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine.