An aspirin a day...

摘要

In 1763, a clergyman called Edmund I Stone based in the English town of Chipping Norton wrote a letter to the president of the Royal Society, the foremost British scientific body of the time. Stone described his discovery that the powdered bark of willow trees, which commonly grew on riverbanks, helped treat the "agues", or fevers that could afflict those living in damp areas. Stone argued this was proof of the "doctrine of signatures", which stated that nature's remedies gave clues, perhaps by their location, to indicate how they should be used. While Stone's line in philosophy failed to make it into mainstream medicine, his finding about willow bark helped drive the development of one of the most widely used drugs in the world today. Willow bark is a rich source of salicylates, the class of compounds to which aspirin (acetylsalicylate) belongs. For more than a century now, people have been taking aspirin to reduce fever and relieve pain, and new benefits from the drug are still emerging. Aspirin's blood-thinning properties make it an excellent long-term treatment to help prevent heart attacks and strokes, and it now appears that the drug could reduce the risk of developing cancer and Alzheimer's disease.