I never expected that aspirin and heroin came from the same person.

"If it weren't for Felix Hofmann, there might not be aspirin, the most famous over-the-counter drug. But without Hofmann, one of the most dangerous drugs today, heroin, might not have existed either."

Hoffman's Background

Felix Hoffmann was born in 1868 into an industrial family.

His father was a manufacturer in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and influenced by his father, young Hoffmann was interested in manufacturing and chemical processes from an early age.

While in high school, he began helping out in pharmacies in towns across Germany. After entering college, Hoffmann studied chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Munich, Germany, and obtained a doctorate degree.

After graduating with a doctorate, due to Hoffmann's excellent performance in chemistry and pharmacology, his mentor Adolf von Baeyer (winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) recommended him to work for Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and fuel giant.

In 1894, Hoffmann joined the newly established pharmaceutical research department of Bayer in Germany and became a real researcher.

At the time, Hofmann and his colleagues wanted to create new substances that could be used as medicines, but not simply extract active ingredients from natural ingredients.

The advent of aspirin

Until he met salicylic acid.

Salicylic acid is a substance found in willow bark that is used to prepare painkillers.

The pain-relieving and fever-alleviating properties of willow bark have been documented since ancient times, with the earliest records dating back 4,000 years ago to the Sumerians, who noted that using willow bark could provide relief.

In China 2,000 years ago, ancient people also used willow bark and willow buds to treat symptoms such as rheumatic fever, colds and bleeding.

Although willow bark has been used for a very long time, it was not until the 1830s that scientists synthesized salicylic acid in the laboratory. However, the salicylic acid produced in this way is not pure enough and can easily cause stomach pain, so it is not suitable for daily use.

To solve this problem, Hofmann read most of the scientific literature at the time and found a new method to modify the hydroxyl group on the benzene ring with acetic acid to turn salicylic acid into a pure chemical.

At first, the scientific community was skeptical about Hoffman's research and no one agreed with his research.

It wasn't until Heinrich Dresser, head of Bayer's pharmaceutical laboratory, conducted animal experiments on the salicylic acid and proved that the salicylic acid had indeed become pure.

In addition, purified salicylic acid can reduce pain, reduce the risk of fever, and has no side effects on the stomach.

The drug synthesized by Hoffmann is called acetylsalicylic acid , and Bayer called it aspirin. After the invention of aspirin, it became widely popular in the world because of its good analgesic effect and few side effects.

A 1917 Bayer aspirin advertisement in The New York Times

Having said that, if things continue to develop in this direction, then the name Felix Hoffmann represents the savior who helps alleviate human suffering.

The wrong appearance - heroin

But unfortunately, the opposite happened.

Another of Hoffman's "great" achievements turned him from a savior into an "executioner."

At the time, Dresser was studying the analgesic properties of codeine (an opium derivative), but since codeine was not pure, Dresser asked Hoffman to perform the same operation on morphine as on salicylic acid, hoping to produce pure codeine.

However, due to some unknown factors, Hofmann extracted not codeine, but diacetylmorphine, also known as heroin.

Well, although heroin was synthesized, the most terrifying thing was not this, but the promotion of the drug at that time.

A Bayer heroin ad from 1911

Because at that time Hoffman and other scientists had not discovered the terrible addictiveness and serious side effects of heroin.

At that time, heroin could be used to treat coughs and had a strong sedative effect, so it was widely used.

So the money-obsessed people in power at Bayer began to promote it aggressively and hired a group of experts to spread the word about the benefits of heroin.

Unfortunately, heroin is not a cure for diseases, it is a drug that destroys the human soul.

Eventually, a serious problem of heroin abuse first emerged in the United States and then spread throughout the world.

During his lifetime, Felix Hofmann saw two of the drugs he researched become widely used.

One is aspirin, a good medicine that has saved millions of people, and the other is heroin, a drug that has harmed millions of people.

Perhaps one day the lives saved by aspirin will balance the deaths and abuses caused by heroin.

But, would this make sense?