Aspirin: The remarkable story of a wonder drug by Diarmuid Jeffreys, Bloomsbury, £16.99, ISBN 0747570779
WHEN aspirin was first formulated by a chemist at the pharmaceutical company Bayer, the head of his laboratory judged: “The product has no value.” Now aspirin has been judged “the most thoroughly tested and most highly cost-effective of all remedies in clinical practice” – for its effect on vascular disease rather than its canonical status as a painkiller. In Aspirin, writer and TV producer Diarmuid Jeffreys traces this remarkable progress, probably one of the most fascinating stories in the whole of medicine.
First, though, the discovery.…
