Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry out there coated in powder. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is the stuff you should know, the aspirin edition.
Speaker 1: Why don't you pick this one? I've been reading a
Speaker 1: giant book on aspirin and yeah, yeah, biography and you know,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, backstage that aspirin, all the ups and downs,
Speaker 1: like a behind the music basically. Yeah, I don't remember
Speaker 1: why I picked this. I just don't remember, but um,
Speaker 1: I did, and I'm going to stand by it. Remember
Speaker 1: when aspirin o'deed on itself? Yeah, yeah, June's family. That's
Speaker 1: some nasty stuff to od onto, it turns out, I
Speaker 1: would think, so. I mean not only the result, but
Speaker 1: just the taste. I don't like the taste either. But
Speaker 1: haven't you said that you're like a good eas headache
Speaker 1: powder dude? Yeah, good eas er BC. I will, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a lot of aspirin. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you will, and we'll get to this. But if
Speaker 1: you have like a hard issue, they recommend you take
Speaker 1: something like eighty five milligrams and in a good eason
Speaker 1: a BC is like eight and fifty Holy cow, is
Speaker 1: it really? Yeah? Plus caffeine. It's a it's a big
Speaker 1: dose of aspirin plus the sea menafin two. It's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's powdered excetern it's what is the same same formula? Well,
Speaker 1: they're both different, but yeah, one of them is. I
Speaker 1: can't remember which one. I think good eas is powdered, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think BC does not have the SA menafin and
Speaker 1: just has caffeine and maybe more caffeine. Wow, it's like
Speaker 1: the jolt coal of headache powder. But point is, I
Speaker 1: don't take that a lot anymore. And h it uh,
Speaker 1: I don't mind the taste. I though it grows. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out, but I don't love it.
Speaker 1: And I'm I don't just like let it sit on
Speaker 1: my tongue and does allve forever, Like I wash it
Speaker 1: down very quickly, right, But I'm not like I got you.
Speaker 1: It's just pretty better. You have no problem with the drain.
Speaker 1: You're okay, funny guy. So um, we are talking aspirin
Speaker 1: today and it is uh kind of tough. I've realized
Speaker 1: to overstate the importance of aspirin as far as like
Speaker 1: the world's medicine cabinet goes like, there is no other
Speaker 1: drug that has been sold more than aspirin in the
Speaker 1: history of humanity. Did you know that? Sure? Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean you know it's it's it's the go to or
Speaker 1: was for many, many, many many years, until other inseids
Speaker 1: started making the scene. For you know, decades and decades,
Speaker 1: aspirin was sort of the go to for a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. That's true. All right, Let's see if I
Speaker 1: and impress you with this. One of the great things
Speaker 1: about aspirin is it's synthesized from nature that it's actually
Speaker 1: a perfected version of something that you would find in
Speaker 1: a number of plants salasilic acid um. But specifically it
Speaker 1: was Willow that yielded up her secrets for mankind humankind
Speaker 1: to use as a medicine to make things better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's a lot of medicines, and
Speaker 1: that's uh. You know, Emily has gotten really into herbalism
Speaker 1: here in the last few years, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: one of her beefs is that the medical inform of
Speaker 1: industries have synthesized things and gotten rid of a lot
Speaker 1: of the great parts of the plant. Sure she feels
Speaker 1: like are of great use to human beings to make
Speaker 1: the synthetic versions. Okay, fair enough in this case though
Speaker 1: with aspirin, I would argue that it is the improved
Speaker 1: version of nature's version. Oh yeah, I think so, and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll talk about why. But like I said, it
Speaker 1: was the willow plant that people realized pretty far back, chuck. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe it was at least as as Um, as
Speaker 1: late as the Sumerians. Um who I think there are
Speaker 1: clay tablets found that basically said, are your joint sachy,
Speaker 1: Try a little willow leaf tea. It'll fix you right up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was um, you know they I don't think they
Speaker 1: had the name for it at the time, but it
Speaker 1: was sala Cylene was the ingredient, and you could boil
Speaker 1: it down into a tea. Like you said, you could
Speaker 1: dry dry it out and powder that bark up and
Speaker 1: pound it down and work it through a sieve and
Speaker 1: get you know, I guess an early version of goodies,
Speaker 1: and you would, I mean everything from the Egyptians. There's
Speaker 1: the Ebers Papyrus, which is a kind of a fun
Speaker 1: little cookbook textbook, medical journal kind of thing that has
Speaker 1: recipes for myrtle and willow leaf tea for joint pa.
Speaker 1: Great chili recipe in there too, great chili. Uh, they
Speaker 1: too bad. They didn't know about Freedo's back then. But
Speaker 1: um and by the way, speaking of Friedo's, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's actually a chapter in our book about freedom tows
Speaker 1: on dogs. There is, I know, MoMA is in it.
Speaker 1: I think that we don't talk enough about the fun
Speaker 1: chapters of our book. There's a lot of like, kind
Speaker 1: of heavy stuff, but there's also a chapter about freedom tows, which,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a dog, it is it is
Speaker 1: the smell of corn chips that a dog's paws can admit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of one of the more fun chapters.
Speaker 1: I think it was a good chapter for sure, because
Speaker 1: we talked not just about that, but about not just
Speaker 1: about how humans perceived the smell of dogs paws, but
Speaker 1: how dogs perceived the world with smell. Different bacteria can
Speaker 1: make different smells, and it's pretty It was a good one.
Speaker 1: I like that one, although I like our whole book,
Speaker 1: to be honest. I finally got it two days ago.
Speaker 1: Who ray, what do you think? Well, First of all,
Speaker 1: it was very happy about how many they sent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought they were gonna send me a couple of books.
Speaker 1: They sent me a big old box of books like
Speaker 1: they did you. And it was just really great to
Speaker 1: hold in my hand. And and it's it's it's awesome.
Speaker 1: It looks great, it's the size we wanted, it looks
Speaker 1: it looks like a real book. It is. It's a
Speaker 1: legit book, like, which is weird, real book? I know.
Speaker 1: Did they put your name on the box? No, your
Speaker 1: name was on my box? Is that right? They put
Speaker 1: my name on my box too. They just said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? It just said the book titled Then
Speaker 1: by Josh Clark. Yeah, yeah that's what it said. I
Speaker 1: think they just didn't print the whole thing. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: I like my idea that they were going to personalize
Speaker 1: each of our box nice touch flat. This just sounds
Speaker 1: like lazy box printing. But I got you okay. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't like trying to rub it in thinking that
Speaker 1: they would have personalized your box too. But you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to save that box, but whatever. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: can you send me your box? Okay, I'll send you
Speaker 1: the box with a big old load of poop in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a foothole where where it used to see
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Uh. So anyway, you can pre order that
Speaker 1: book stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of mostly
Speaker 1: interesting things. But back to aspirin Um. This book was
Speaker 1: I don't even know where I was talking about. Oh,
Speaker 1: people like plenty of the Elder and Hippocrates had written
Speaker 1: about aspirin, or it wasn't aspirin yet, but sell us Eileen.
Speaker 1: As you know, basically early on it was all about
Speaker 1: reducing fever and reducing joint like arthritis, joint pain inflammation.
Speaker 1: And it's still really good for that too. Aspirin it
Speaker 1: turns out as a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug and
Speaker 1: insid um and it like people realize that it was useful,
Speaker 1: like you said, for for joint inflammation, for a fever reduction,
Speaker 1: which makes it an anti pyretic um, which I think
Speaker 1: is a great word um. And we knew about this
Speaker 1: for centuries and apparently Europe introduced to China for once
Speaker 1: rather than vice versa. But then it just kind of
Speaker 1: fell away, It fell to the wayside um kind of
Speaker 1: out of human knowledge, although like it was still there
Speaker 1: just nobody was thinking about willow any longer until malaria
Speaker 1: became a big thing. When UM the Age of Discovery
Speaker 1: began and Europeans started to uh colonize other parts of
Speaker 1: the world, including South America, malaria became a bit of
Speaker 1: a problem UM. And one of the remedies for malaria
Speaker 1: we figured out was sin chona sinchona, right. I always
Speaker 1: said chinchona, but I think it is cinchona. I always
Speaker 1: say chinchona too, but I'm looking right at it, and
Speaker 1: I don't see that first age unless it's a weird
Speaker 1: pronunciation thing. I think I've probably just been saying it wrong. Okay,
Speaker 1: well let's let's say sin chona. Then we'll pronounce it
Speaker 1: correctly for once in our lives. And that's a different
Speaker 1: kind of tree whose bark works really well to treat malaria,
Speaker 1: and not just treat malaria, but also reduced fevers as well. Um.
Speaker 1: But the problem is is getting it from South America
Speaker 1: can be very very expensive, or it certainly was in
Speaker 1: the UM sixteen, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So it caused
Speaker 1: this one guy European um doctor I believe, or at
Speaker 1: least a researcher named Reverend Edward Stone to look for
Speaker 1: an alternative for it, and he came upon willow. He
Speaker 1: rediscovered willow again for the treatment of fevers in inflammation.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think we mispronounced is it shinchona?
Speaker 1: I just know it's neither. That's so us. I just
Speaker 1: looked up real quick. It says it's sun chona. Okay,
Speaker 1: I like that one. It almost sounds like it almost
Speaker 1: sounds like Quimby saying chowder. It's so weird, So sun shona. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Edward Stone goes looking for an alternative, and he starts
Speaker 1: looking at the willow bark in its properties and does
Speaker 1: a pretty decent study for back then UH in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty three and found that a four hour administration of
Speaker 1: willow bark powder um would reduce fever pretty consistently. And
Speaker 1: like I said, it was a good study for back
Speaker 1: then UM. There were some other Europeans who were also
Speaker 1: extracting um, the active ingredient, from willow, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of happening all around the same time. I think
Speaker 1: it guy named LaRue did the best job of it
Speaker 1: in the early eight and what they got was the
Speaker 1: substance salacene, right, So um. That's basically the they isolated
Speaker 1: the active ingredient in willow bark, and not just willow
Speaker 1: bark um salacene or salacelic acid, which probably sounds familiar
Speaker 1: um if you've ever used some sort of skincare treatment,
Speaker 1: say to combat acne, because it actually goes in and
Speaker 1: dissolves the stuff in your pores, so it comes in
Speaker 1: handy like that. UM. When they when they isolated it,
Speaker 1: they they found out that oh, actually this this pops
Speaker 1: up elsewhere in nature. It's actually UM a kind of
Speaker 1: hormone that plants use for their own immune response. And
Speaker 1: you can find it and everything from willow or myrtle
Speaker 1: or meadow sweet to jasmine peas clover. It pops up
Speaker 1: very It's a pretty common plant hormone. And it was
Speaker 1: isolated finally in the early nineteenth century. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: were a couple of other kind of important uh side
Speaker 1: roads on the way to aspirin. That happened one in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three when a French chemist name Gerhardt, he
Speaker 1: invented aspirin by accident, but he wasn't very refined in
Speaker 1: how he did it. It was not a very good quality,
Speaker 1: was pretty impure. Not very effective, so it was not
Speaker 1: paid very much attention to, but we have to mention him.
Speaker 1: And then in the eighteens, fifties and sixties, some German
Speaker 1: chemists figured out how to produce it synthetically. They learned
Speaker 1: the chemical structure of salicylate, which is just kind of
Speaker 1: crazy to think that they could do stuff like that
Speaker 1: back then. Um, that they were that advanced and learning
Speaker 1: chemical structures of something like that, I was impressed by that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and they figured out how to produce it synthetically,
Speaker 1: made it very much available, very inexpensive, and that was
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. It was a very popular fever
Speaker 1: reducer and pain reliever, despite its side effects, which are
Speaker 1: mainly stomach problems and tenatus. Yes, but the thing is
Speaker 1: is with that um, with especially tenitis and nausea like,
Speaker 1: it can be really bad if you take too much.
Speaker 1: It's temporary, but it can be a real problem. And
Speaker 1: over time they also found out that it can produce
Speaker 1: long term chronic effects because it's so hard on your
Speaker 1: stomach because again, you're using the same sub sense um
Speaker 1: that you used to clean out the ports, does all
Speaker 1: the stuff in your and your pores that has a
Speaker 1: big effect on your stomach, and in fact, we would
Speaker 1: find later on that it erodes your gastric mucosa, your
Speaker 1: stomach lining, and that can produce all sorts of problems
Speaker 1: on its own. In the short term, it makes you
Speaker 1: want to just throw up and die if you take
Speaker 1: too much aspirin. And that's what we figured out with
Speaker 1: salasilic acid. And that was the point of aspirin, was
Speaker 1: to figure out how to create how to take this
Speaker 1: really useful, important drug that had been known for millennia
Speaker 1: by this time, and make it so it was it
Speaker 1: didn't have any of these unpleasant side effects. And that's
Speaker 1: where aspirin came from. Yeah, so maybe we can take
Speaker 1: a break and come back and talk about very sort
Speaker 1: of legendary company out of Germany called Buyer right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, if you heard me say Buyer and you're thinking, dude,
Speaker 1: it's bear aspirin. What are you German? No, I'm not German,
Speaker 1: but that's how you pronounced it over there, It's Buyer.
Speaker 1: We pronounced a bear over here. They were originally a
Speaker 1: die making company, but like so many other companies involved
Speaker 1: in chemistry, um, they could pivot very easily and you
Speaker 1: start discovering things when you're working in chemistry that might
Speaker 1: make you more money, and that was sort of the
Speaker 1: case with Buyer, and they set up a pharmaceutical wing
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you know, we're discovering these other things
Speaker 1: and you can make a ton of money in pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 1: And this is just sort of at the beginning of that.
Speaker 1: They had no idea what they were onto, but they
Speaker 1: started a pharmaceutical wing and said, one of our first
Speaker 1: things we want to try and do is to create
Speaker 1: a version of salasylate that doesn't have all these nasty
Speaker 1: side effects. Yeah, and there's a there's a long standing
Speaker 1: story in the chemistry community UM that a guy named
Speaker 1: Felix Hoffman, a German chemist who worked for bear Um,
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out a way to make salasilic
Speaker 1: acid UH more easy on his father's stomach. His father
Speaker 1: had rheumatism um, which is a chronic inflammation of the joints,
Speaker 1: and he had to take salasilic acid a lot. So
Speaker 1: Felix Hoffman was trying to figure out how to help
Speaker 1: his dad out when he stumbled upon the recipe that
Speaker 1: or what would become the recipe for aspirin that's right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: all of this lad to one of the most popular
Speaker 1: drugs in the history of the world. Um, there is
Speaker 1: some debate. Like with everything like this, it seems like
Speaker 1: sometimes it's hard to tell who exactly has given credit
Speaker 1: because history is written by the victors, and um, in
Speaker 1: this case, well, there's a there's three men. There's a
Speaker 1: fourth dude named Carl Duisberg, who is included as being
Speaker 1: a big person in the development because he was a
Speaker 1: marketer and his marketing skills were a big, big reason
Speaker 1: why aspirin was so successful. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: point to Felix Hoffman as the quote unquote inventor of
Speaker 1: aspirin because on August ten, in his notebook entry, he
Speaker 1: described adding UH ascetic and hydrate and hydride to UH
Speaker 1: salasylate and created aspirin. I'm gonna say it if you
Speaker 1: won't say it. It's it's called aspirin. A setle silic man,
Speaker 1: a setle salacilic acid. Yeah, it's it's kind of fun
Speaker 1: to say. It has like a setle seal a salic acid.
Speaker 1: It's the ascid that you love. But Chuck calls it
Speaker 1: aspirin because it's easier and he can call it that
Speaker 1: legally because Aspurn's our proprietary epin m as we'll see
Speaker 1: in that. Wow, that was something. Should we leave that in? Sure?
Speaker 1: All right? I think that's our gift to the listeners.
Speaker 1: That's some end of the year's aningus right there. That
Speaker 1: means our our brains are entering the December mush phase. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: is it. I'm looking forward to that break. I New
Speaker 1: York can't wait. Yeah, everyone, I think we've said this before.
Speaker 1: We take a few weeks off at the end of
Speaker 1: the year, and it's just do not have to research
Speaker 1: stuff for three weeks? Is really nice? You guys don't
Speaker 1: notice because we make sure we record extra episodes in advance,
Speaker 1: but we actually do. We we bulk up the kitty
Speaker 1: as we say. That's right, So, um, just just real
Speaker 1: quick to put a button in this. Felix Hoffman is
Speaker 1: is um said to be the guy who created this
Speaker 1: a guy named Arthur Ike and Gruen said later on
Speaker 1: he actually wrote a letter to Bear from a concentration
Speaker 1: camp during the Nazi um the Third Reich, because he
Speaker 1: was Jewish, and he said, I was the one who
Speaker 1: came up with this um, but my my records were
Speaker 1: expunged by the Nazis. Other people are like, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's true or not. And a guy named
Speaker 1: Heinrich Dresser, he said, it doesn't matter if it's true,
Speaker 1: because I rediscovered this stuff. I told both of these
Speaker 1: guys not to mess with this. They did anyway. I
Speaker 1: took their research published, it didn't give them credit, and
Speaker 1: now I am the one officially who is listed as
Speaker 1: the inventor of asperin, even though it was really Felix
Speaker 1: Hoffman and possibly Arthur Ike and Gruen who did Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess you could do that if there isn't
Speaker 1: any patents being filed. You could literally just sort of
Speaker 1: publish something and steal someone's work. Yeah, which is I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's kind of weird to think about, but
Speaker 1: I guess the law was the law. But they did
Speaker 1: file patents, and I mean Bear realized pretty quickly. This
Speaker 1: is at the same time they were coming out with
Speaker 1: heroin too, so Bear had to really big hits, like
Speaker 1: right right with from what I read, within a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks of each other, and Felix Hoffman was central
Speaker 1: to both of them. But with aspirin, they were like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a big deal. Everybody loves salasilic
Speaker 1: acid and the effects that it has, but they hate
Speaker 1: the side effects and we just got rid of them.
Speaker 1: So they patented it, and they came up with the
Speaker 1: name aspirin. So the A is a nod to the
Speaker 1: ascetic and hydride the acetal part. The spur is a
Speaker 1: reference to the botanical names Spiria old Maria, which is
Speaker 1: the name for meadows sweet. Another source of um salasilic acid, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that would be Asperia. And then they added the
Speaker 1: I N at the end because that was just sort
Speaker 1: of one of the naming conventions for medicines, just like
Speaker 1: we have cane like cocaine and cylin for antibiotics, they
Speaker 1: would add an I N. So Aspoia became aspirin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you picked up the box and you're like,
Speaker 1: asper what is the So you get to the end
Speaker 1: and see the I N and be like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a medicine, that's right. So Germany patents this in the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred in the United States. After patenting it in
Speaker 1: Germany and everywhere they could they would try and get
Speaker 1: a patent and it's been sort of an interesting story
Speaker 1: since then because after World War One, Uh, and this
Speaker 1: is I didn't even know this kind of stuff happened.
Speaker 1: But um, Germany had to surrender their patents two countries
Speaker 1: that had defeated them, and one of them was Aspirin,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't prevent competitors all over the world from
Speaker 1: making their own version. They did retain the trademark in
Speaker 1: a few different countries. But that is, like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: that is why you won't see aspirin or you don't
Speaker 1: have to listpit list bit list it with a capital A,
Speaker 1: because it is it's just one of those what do
Speaker 1: you call it, proprietary epinem Yes, I love those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are great. Yeah, you don't have to list it,
Speaker 1: you don't have to say aspens correct. But um, some
Speaker 1: historians actually make the case, Chuck, that World War Two
Speaker 1: happened because Germany was treated so harshly after World War
Speaker 1: One that it led to such traconian um basically revenge
Speaker 1: on Germany and the German people, that it allowed a
Speaker 1: guy like Hitler to rise as this populist and gain control.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I didn't know about the patents either, But
Speaker 1: that kind of jibes and dovetails with that whole view.
Speaker 1: It's like give us all your art and patents, right,
Speaker 1: what else you can ask for? Land? Sure, I guess,
Speaker 1: but that's sure. And they did do that. Remember the
Speaker 1: the uh, the Nazi gold episode. We didn't so Um.
Speaker 1: There's another side story to all this that came out
Speaker 1: of World War One as well, um, and that there
Speaker 1: was an embargo on phenol um by England. England said, hey,
Speaker 1: we make a lot of feene all over here. It's
Speaker 1: an active ingredient and a lot of stuff including aspirin,
Speaker 1: but not just aspirin explosives to which is one big
Speaker 1: reason why we want to keep a lid on this thing.
Speaker 1: And we're going to make sure that Germany doesn't get
Speaker 1: any And there wasn't anything official in the United States
Speaker 1: banning anyone from selling to fhen Aal the Germany, but
Speaker 1: it was definitely looked like as you were aiding people
Speaker 1: who were at the very least the enemy of our enemy,
Speaker 1: if not our enemy yet because we had an inner
Speaker 1: World War One yet. Um. But that didn't stop Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison from selling Feenal to the Germans during World War One?
Speaker 1: Did it? No? He was Germany was looking at a
Speaker 1: losing one of their most profitable drugs and said all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna send a spy over there, uh to secretly
Speaker 1: buy fhenal from Thomas Edison because he's guy loves to
Speaker 1: blow stuff up. He's allows you with it. And I
Speaker 1: think that was just exposed when one of the conspirators
Speaker 1: accidentally left his briefcase on the train, and it was
Speaker 1: a real black eye on not only Baia but Edison
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and I mean like a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, oh wow, you know they were they
Speaker 1: were trying to keep the Germans from having aspirin during
Speaker 1: World War One again he could use phenal to create
Speaker 1: T and T and other explosives. So that seems to
Speaker 1: be the reason why, which makes Thomas Edison, he actually
Speaker 1: created the phenal himself and then selling it to the
Speaker 1: Germans all the more shady, you know, totally. So it
Speaker 1: was definitely a blemish on on Edison for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: And he eventually stopped selling it to them and then
Speaker 1: donated the rest of the U. S. Army, I believe. Right,
Speaker 1: So Bayer is selling a lot of aspirin as a
Speaker 1: powder at first, um kind of like you know what
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, But they figured out that
Speaker 1: people and this is kind of how most a lot
Speaker 1: of medicaments were powders at this point. And I think
Speaker 1: aspirin from Bayer was one of the first ones to
Speaker 1: be made into a tablet, and they said, hey, if
Speaker 1: we can compress this stuff to a little tube, uh people,
Speaker 1: it won't make people like wretch with disgust from how
Speaker 1: bitter it is. You can just pop it into your mouth,
Speaker 1: wash it down with some uh, with some liquor or
Speaker 1: absent or something, some schnops peach peach knops and um,
Speaker 1: and people will take it more readily or at least
Speaker 1: not want to not take it. And it really really
Speaker 1: worked and that really popularized the use of tablets kind
Speaker 1: of from that point on. Yeah, not just with aspirin,
Speaker 1: but with all medicines. Introduced the public to it, and
Speaker 1: Bear was actually with their aspirin. They were also I
Speaker 1: think we talked about this in the U Tile and
Speaker 1: All Poisoning episodes that they were the ones who introduced
Speaker 1: the cotton ball to pill bottles and they didn't to
Speaker 1: keep the aspirin from breaking because they were worried that
Speaker 1: somebody would take a broken tablet and it would be
Speaker 1: too little of a dose. Or they would take a
Speaker 1: bunch of broken tablets and it would be too much
Speaker 1: of a dose, so they put the cotton in there
Speaker 1: to keep them from breaking. And with the advent of
Speaker 1: gel caps and coated cap soles and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: there's never been a need for the cotton ball any longer.
Speaker 1: But we've all gotten so used to it, we um
Speaker 1: would we would be suspicious of opening a bottle of
Speaker 1: pills without it, even though it's totally unnecessary. Now, I
Speaker 1: love that little cotton ball. That's a great, great, great um.
Speaker 1: It's at least one of the better um cotton ball
Speaker 1: facts out there. Well. I like anything that can be repurposed,
Speaker 1: like a twist six on a loaf of bread that
Speaker 1: ties that up. Or you know, you gotta use that
Speaker 1: cotton ball. You got a great like you don't do you?
Speaker 1: You don't stick it back in your pill bottle, do you?
Speaker 1: Or do you? Yes? Okay, I actually go to the
Speaker 1: trouble of taking it out out and then putting it
Speaker 1: back in like a total schmuck. That's right. I try
Speaker 1: to use those things. What I do is that is
Speaker 1: rapid toothpick with this cotton, and I use that as
Speaker 1: a ear swab. That's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the toothpick that came with uh what what comes with
Speaker 1: the toothpick? I guess from the from the pig in
Speaker 1: the blanket or something when you went and use the
Speaker 1: bathroom for free at a show, niece, but refused to
Speaker 1: eat there as I still have all these things left
Speaker 1: over from being a a kid from the lower middle class.
Speaker 1: You know, like it feels weird to throw away a
Speaker 1: twist six or or those rubber bands that come around asparagus. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: who throws that stuff away? No, buddy, you got to
Speaker 1: use that stuff, no sensible human being. I don't know
Speaker 1: about using the cotton from a pill bottles a q
Speaker 1: tip with a toothpick. It's actually very dangerous, chuck, But
Speaker 1: I like the spirit behind it, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should not do that because a qute tip or
Speaker 1: a toothpick is way too stabby to be putting into
Speaker 1: your ear. Yeah, for sure. And you should be using
Speaker 1: those ear swabs anyway, right from what I understand. And
Speaker 1: one more fact when we're cotton based fact, remember qute
Speaker 1: tips were originally called baby gaze. Oh that's right, yea
Speaker 1: little baby gaze what was that from the ear wax episode?
Speaker 1: Maybe or ear candling? Maybe maybe I can't remember. Don't
Speaker 1: do it. Don't ear candle everyone, no, at least got
Speaker 1: that shirt now. Friends don't let friends ear candle? Right,
Speaker 1: teenage ear candle in, don't do it. So buyer is
Speaker 1: selling a ton of aspirin. They've always sold a ton
Speaker 1: of aspirin. I think the most recent stat that ED
Speaker 1: was able to dig up was from about nine years
Speaker 1: ago in Um, where worldwide there was about forty thou
Speaker 1: tons of aspirin produced, and in the US Americans were
Speaker 1: taking ten billion aspirin tablets a year. Billion aspirin In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty UM it was the world's most purchased drug,
Speaker 1: according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I also
Speaker 1: read that in Argentina, in part because they have a
Speaker 1: change shortage, like a legit one going on there. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things you might get is change at
Speaker 1: the grocery store, gas station or whatever, is a couple
Speaker 1: of tabs of aspirin. Oh nice, sure, if you makes sense?
Speaker 1: Why not? Apparently they love their aspirin there for so.
Speaker 1: Aspirin is one of those drugs where, for many, many,
Speaker 1: many decades, they had no idea how it worked. It
Speaker 1: was prescribed a lot. It eventually made its way too
Speaker 1: over the counter in the nineteen twenties. It was one
Speaker 1: of these things where they knew it worked because they
Speaker 1: they did tons and tons of studies where like, this
Speaker 1: stuff is really effective and it's the side effects aren't terrible.
Speaker 1: As long as you're not using a ton of it,
Speaker 1: it's pretty safe. But it's really complex when you try
Speaker 1: and figure out how exactly chemically any drug works in
Speaker 1: the human body, because of what happens when it gets
Speaker 1: in your body. It's just it's it's really hard even
Speaker 1: still to pinpoint the exact path something takes. When it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to say, well, hey, who cares, We've
Speaker 1: got a thousand studies that show it works. Who cares
Speaker 1: what chemical processes it work. Yeah, we just know that
Speaker 1: it does work and in this way, and we also
Speaker 1: know from all these studies that it has this side
Speaker 1: effect and it might affect this group more or in
Speaker 1: this way than other groups. UM. Apparently aspirin has the
Speaker 1: largest chemical database of any compound anywhere. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true or not. I read it in
Speaker 1: the Croatian brand profile of aspirin um. But it's a
Speaker 1: great knock your socks off kind of fact if you
Speaker 1: ask me. Yeah. But they they eventually did learn, didn't they. Um,
Speaker 1: they definitely did learn that it does work. Um, and
Speaker 1: exactly how I guess. Yeah, that is kind of one
Speaker 1: of those rare examples of how we did figure it out,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I think so? In the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies. Uh, And they were using building off the
Speaker 1: work of Harry Collier, John Vanen, Priscilla piper Um, they
Speaker 1: figured out that the there was a substance in the body.
Speaker 1: It's weird. They kind of figured it out in a
Speaker 1: roundabout way because they figured out what the substance was
Speaker 1: that actually causes inflammation then in the body, which is uh,
Speaker 1: the release of prostaglandin. And they figured out that insets
Speaker 1: actually stopped this from happening, and aspirin is an inset,
Speaker 1: like we said, And so in a roundabout way they
Speaker 1: ended up figuring out how it worked. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: so prostaglandings are like a whole class of hormones that
Speaker 1: are produced at the site of like an injury or
Speaker 1: an illness to help your immune response like inflammation, pain,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff that basically says like this needs
Speaker 1: to be taken care of and the we need to
Speaker 1: get some some immune response here as fast as possible.
Speaker 1: And so aspirin blocks prostag landings from being released UM
Speaker 1: by enzymes called cyclo oxygen AISE which kind of kick
Speaker 1: off the production of prostag landings. And they figured this outly,
Speaker 1: So this is how it works. This is how the
Speaker 1: um anti inflammatory process works. And it's kind of a
Speaker 1: It was a big enough deal that John Vayne received
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for in two for medicine. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they also figured out and this is kind of key
Speaker 1: with aspirin. Uh, not only does it um does that
Speaker 1: enzyme inhibit that release, but it kind of can do
Speaker 1: it permanently, which is what separates aspirin from uh, what's
Speaker 1: what's the one? The other one, the big famous one,
Speaker 1: Uh Adville Advill. Yes, I'm blanking because I never take
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. Really, I'm an Adville guy. I
Speaker 1: try not to take it because I don't want my
Speaker 1: kidneys to blow up inside of my body. But um,
Speaker 1: like when will you take it? Like headaches? Basically it's
Speaker 1: a headache if my headache is bad enough, I will
Speaker 1: I will take an advil. It's pretty rare that I
Speaker 1: actually do, but um, yeah, I mean that's what that's
Speaker 1: that's my go to because the other stuff doesn't work,
Speaker 1: like Thailand all doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything for me. It's weird. You get headaches like regular
Speaker 1: Uh no, it's pretty pretty infrequent. I have to say
Speaker 1: I have been like the last couple of weeks. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I probably have more advil the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, and I have in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: and they run up to the election. That's pretty funny. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't never get headaches. I mean the the rare
Speaker 1: hangover headache. But I don't get just like regular headaches
Speaker 1: for no reason. Uh yeah, no, I normally don't either.
Speaker 1: So what do you take? You take? Wait we established
Speaker 1: this BC right, Yeah, and that's again just for hangover cures.
Speaker 1: I hate that that's the only time I use that stuff,
Speaker 1: but because I don't want to come across as a drunk.
Speaker 1: But it's the rare, the rare hangover remedy. Got Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's what most people use that stuff for.
Speaker 1: It too Yeah, it's it's the caffeine and there it
Speaker 1: really gives you a little boost. Sure, but you know,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do when you get into it when
Speaker 1: you're approaching fifty isn't learn when to stop drinking, right.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, as you're approaching fifty, it takes
Speaker 1: like one drink to get a hangover. Oh no, really,
Speaker 1: sure that doesn't happen to you know, I'm good, okay
Speaker 1: ki um. So there was one other thing that happened
Speaker 1: to when when people were studying aspirin, like so like
Speaker 1: the this is the point so many people are taking
Speaker 1: aspirin that an average doctor conduct like basically a straw
Speaker 1: pole or some sort of study on his patients or
Speaker 1: her patients um to to investigate the effects of aspirin.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened with one doctor and I believe
Speaker 1: the fifties named Lawrence Craven, who basically said, I've noticed
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of weird connection between more blood
Speaker 1: loss um and ton selectomies that I'm performing on my patients.
Speaker 1: It seems like the people who take aspirin regularly bleed more.
Speaker 1: And he figured out that aspirin is a blood thinner
Speaker 1: from this, Yes, and uh, I guess let's take a break. Now.
Speaker 1: It's gonna say to save something for a surprise. But
Speaker 1: that was the surprise. But we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, So we've spoiled the big surprise,
Speaker 1: which we Josh spoiled the big surprise, which is the
Speaker 1: value of aspirin um more and more over the years
Speaker 1: has been especially once other insects came on the scene
Speaker 1: and took a lot of the market share has been
Speaker 1: less fever reducer, less pain reliever, and more anticoagulant and more. Hey,
Speaker 1: this can really help you out if you have potential
Speaker 1: heart condition. Yeah, because they've figured out there's another prost
Speaker 1: to land and throw on boxing A two that forms
Speaker 1: platelets in the blood. Like if you have a cut
Speaker 1: or something like that and your blood eventually clots. You
Speaker 1: can thank through on boxing A two for forming that
Speaker 1: the plate lists are joining the plate lists together UM
Speaker 1: and aspirin specifically keeps that from happening. And like you said,
Speaker 1: the other in SAIDs don't do that. It's just aspirin.
Speaker 1: And from that discovery, aspirin was saved from probably obscurity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a point in the I think the seventies, eighties, nineties,
Speaker 1: maybe even where aspirin didn't even make the list of
Speaker 1: top ten over the counter pain relievers. It had fallen
Speaker 1: so far out of favor. Yeah, it was like, that's
Speaker 1: your parents pain reliever. It's not cool. That was not hip.
Speaker 1: Aspirin was going the way of the dodo and then
Speaker 1: they discovered this anti coagulant, uh sort of, I mean
Speaker 1: not a side effect. I guess it just became a
Speaker 1: a cross use or something, and then it became the
Speaker 1: main use. And there are a few different reasons why
Speaker 1: you might take something like um, it's usually like a
Speaker 1: baby aspirin, but it sort of depends. But um, it's
Speaker 1: always very low dose, but primary prevention if you've if
Speaker 1: you've never had a stroke, you've never had out a
Speaker 1: heart attack, but you may be at risk for something
Speaker 1: like that. Your doctor might say you want to get
Speaker 1: on a daily baby aspirin. Not always because the benefits
Speaker 1: are somewhat uncertain, and there you know, there are other
Speaker 1: risks like again, it thins the blood, so if you
Speaker 1: if you get cut or something, you're gonna bleed a
Speaker 1: lot more. And they don't exactly know why. But it affects.
Speaker 1: It helps prevent heart attacks better for men, strokes better
Speaker 1: for women. It is very weird, but that all falls
Speaker 1: into the banner of of of preventative aspirin taking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and because it can cause bleeding and it can also
Speaker 1: cause potentially gastro intestinal bleeding from messing with your stomach
Speaker 1: so bad even a low dose, but a chronic low dose.
Speaker 1: Um that they say, unless you have a high risk,
Speaker 1: you probably don't want to start that regiment every day.
Speaker 1: So um, basically, don't start taking aspirin without talking to
Speaker 1: your doctor first. Like that's definitely one of those caveats
Speaker 1: that you want to you want to say too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: Secondary prevention is the next one. Uh, if you have
Speaker 1: actually had a vascular event, if you've had a stroke
Speaker 1: or a heart attack, then you will probably almost assuredly
Speaker 1: be prescribed to take that daily low dose aspirin because
Speaker 1: it is statistically significant, um that they have found there
Speaker 1: are large, large reductions in subsequent heart attacks and strokes
Speaker 1: if you've already had one and then you start that
Speaker 1: low dose and that nuts. Yeah, it's amazing. Um. Like
Speaker 1: they they there was a study in the estimated I
Speaker 1: think it was a British study that was published in
Speaker 1: the British Medical journal UM that aspirin probably saves a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand lives a year. I guess the back in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties at least just from that secondary prevention.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And then there's a cute vascular events e g.
Speaker 1: You're having a heart attack or a stroke right now,
Speaker 1: they say go take an aspirin, at least one aspirin,
Speaker 1: maybe two, and it will actually possibly saved your life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they've done study after study and it has
Speaker 1: significant increase in survival rates. So chuck. There's some other
Speaker 1: weird stuff that they're like, we don't really know how
Speaker 1: this works. It's just typical aspirin stuff. We just know
Speaker 1: that it works. UM. That are starting to become like
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial body of medical literature about other benefits
Speaker 1: that aspirin provides, not the least of which is it
Speaker 1: seems to prevent some forms of cancer. Yeah, cancer is
Speaker 1: a big one. Uh. It might slow or even prevent
Speaker 1: dementira on set um. They've shown there's there's some evidence
Speaker 1: that it reduces mortality for women that are high risk
Speaker 1: for preclampsia, which is a sort of a high blood
Speaker 1: pressure thing that happens to pregnant women. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just now. And like you said that, there's been
Speaker 1: more studies about aspirin like any other medicine, and they
Speaker 1: haven't stopped because they're still discovering things like this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They so with specific kinds of cancer. It seems like
Speaker 1: colorectal cancer is the one that that people benefit from
Speaker 1: the most, at least as far as we know right now.
Speaker 1: There's one study that found a thirty eight percent decrease.
Speaker 1: This is a fourteen thousand person population study. Um or Yeah,
Speaker 1: population sample. Thirty eight percent reduction in the chances of
Speaker 1: getting colorectal cancer if you took a daily aspirin regimen.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Uh. It's not all great though, like we said,
Speaker 1: they're they're the regular side effects like the bleeding and
Speaker 1: the stomach issues and potentially stomach bleeding. Uh. They've also
Speaker 1: found that it suppresses immune response, and they don't fully
Speaker 1: get that, um, but they do think that. I think
Speaker 1: it's the low dose aspirin over Uh. I think the
Speaker 1: lo dos aspirin is not hindering the ammune response. It's
Speaker 1: really just the higher doses. But they figured out, well,
Speaker 1: actually we can use this unlike graft operations or organ transplants.
Speaker 1: You can give somebody aspirin and it will keep help
Speaker 1: keep the body from rejecting it. Yeah, that pretty amazing. Historically,
Speaker 1: they have sort of looked back now and said, I
Speaker 1: think all this heavy aspirin use might have heard us
Speaker 1: in the past with things like the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic,
Speaker 1: the mortality rate could have increased because they were just
Speaker 1: like shoveling aspirin down those their throats. Yeah. What else,
Speaker 1: There's a couple of other things. Um Again, there's that
Speaker 1: g I bleedings that they found that, um, if you
Speaker 1: already have a blood clotting disorder, you probably don't want
Speaker 1: to take aspirin. And I read somewhere that um Restputant
Speaker 1: actually gained favor from the Romanovs from saving one of
Speaker 1: the romanovs kids lives who had hemophilia by saying like
Speaker 1: they needed to stop using any kind of modern medicine,
Speaker 1: which included aspirin, which probably saved the kid's life because
Speaker 1: it kept it from being UM kept the blood from
Speaker 1: thinning of in a kid that already had hemophilia, And
Speaker 1: they thought reciput and was a magical healer for that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then another thing we should mention in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, they discovered that giving aspirin to kids really
Speaker 1: increase their chances of something called race syndrome or race
Speaker 1: syndrome R E y E, which causes brain swelling, brain damage,
Speaker 1: very often least to death. And there were This was
Speaker 1: a big discovery and a lot of guidelines UM went
Speaker 1: in place where they all of a sudden, like kids
Speaker 1: using aspirin went down by which at the time was
Speaker 1: along with the increase of other insects, really really put
Speaker 1: a hurt and on aspirin's market share. Yeah. No, they
Speaker 1: found that if you cut the use of aspirin UM,
Speaker 1: the rates of race syndrome and kids went down. I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, so they were like stop using get
Speaker 1: stopped giving your kids aspirin. Yeah, basically, And it was
Speaker 1: already like you're saying, I mean the ends other end
Speaker 1: sets they cut into their market shore and that one
Speaker 1: almost killed aspirin. It was just that the heart protectiveness
Speaker 1: that brought it back. Yeah. Another thing that almost killed
Speaker 1: aspirin and buyer was UM. After World War One, they
Speaker 1: were bought out by IG Farben and um if you
Speaker 1: know anything about I G Farb in that company, they
Speaker 1: manufactured zyclon b, very scary stuff. Um, but bear survived
Speaker 1: all that. The dissolution of I G Farben eventually happened
Speaker 1: and they were able to kind of just say, hey,
Speaker 1: that wasn't us. We weren't doing that. We're the good
Speaker 1: old fashioned aspirin and heroin people, right exactly. So um,
Speaker 1: over the years they figured out like, Okay, there's still
Speaker 1: problems with aspirin that we we could stand to still
Speaker 1: keep going, Like the whole G I bleeding thing seems
Speaker 1: to be a problem. So they've come with different formulations
Speaker 1: and h ed who helps us with this? One turned
Speaker 1: up that there was at least one mentioned that they
Speaker 1: tried to chocolate coating of aspirin, which sounds delicious, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't find any other place that had that. No,
Speaker 1: but they did make the just easier to swallow and
Speaker 1: less bitter coded versions they did. And let's not forget
Speaker 1: buffer and remember buffering. What was buffering, even buffering was
Speaker 1: an aspirin with a UM and UH and acid attached
Speaker 1: to it, and that's that was It kept your your
Speaker 1: stomach from getting upset, and apparently Bear also came up
Speaker 1: with a version that had a coating so strong it
Speaker 1: survives your stomach and and it dissolves in the gut
Speaker 1: where it's needed. Where it's it's absorbed, you just poop it.
Speaker 1: Eyeah's totally useless. It's called bear useless aspirin. It's called corn.
Speaker 1: All right, that's how they coded. Dude, Uh, you got
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well, since Chuck
Speaker 1: said he's got nothing else and I said I got
Speaker 1: nothing else, and we're just both presuming that Jerry's got
Speaker 1: nothing else, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: from Alex Ramos about the Bay of Pigs movie. And
Speaker 1: by the way, uh, we should issue a quick correction.
Speaker 1: I had one too, but I know that you very
Speaker 1: much misspoke when you said Roberto Clemente was dishonorably discharged.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. Yes, that was just a mouth error.
Speaker 1: We knew that it was honorable, and I didn't catch
Speaker 1: it at the time either. So thanks for those h
Speaker 1: for yends pittsburgh Ians who wrote in yes, and then
Speaker 1: there was one I did oh, I think, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: rabbits aren't rodents. I got that. But rodents are rabbits? Right? What? Alright?
Speaker 1: Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania. I love your show. Guys.
Speaker 1: Started listening in a couple of years ago to East
Speaker 1: of Pain and Monotony of scraping off old wallpaper in
Speaker 1: the house my wife and I had just bought and
Speaker 1: have been a devoted listener ever since. Listening to Bay
Speaker 1: of Pigs right now. I haven't finished yet, so I
Speaker 1: may be jumping the gun. You're not, but you were
Speaker 1: musing about making a movie one day about the Bay
Speaker 1: of Pigs opera ration. I want to let you know
Speaker 1: that they're sort of is. There's a Coleman Francis movie
Speaker 1: called Red Zone, Cuba that is partially about the Bay
Speaker 1: of Pigs operation and also, for some reason, about a
Speaker 1: tungsten mine with hidden treasure. It's a real snooze fest,
Speaker 1: plotting and confusing, which is why it was picked up
Speaker 1: by Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day.
Speaker 1: It's a film for derision. I may have actually watched
Speaker 1: it then. If that's the case, I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Though I don't remember that one either say in their
Speaker 1: commentary is great, makes it watchable? I love the show.
Speaker 1: Keep it up. Also and the off chance you read
Speaker 1: this on the air, wouldn't mind you plugging my artwork?
Speaker 1: Of course, Alex will plug your artwork. I'm a self
Speaker 1: taught painter, mostly painting realistic still life pieces and acrylic
Speaker 1: and my work can be found at Alex dot Ramos
Speaker 1: Studio dot com. That is our a m O S.
Speaker 1: Very nice, nice plug, Chuck, that was beautiful. It's good.
Speaker 1: We don't plug stuff a lot, but we love we
Speaker 1: love artists, and people are out there trying to scrape
Speaker 1: by here in this weird time and I'm not seeing
Speaker 1: it right now. When I just clicked it, though, I
Speaker 1: think I clicked them the wrong ding. Okay, God, did
Speaker 1: you just fall for a phishing scam? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think I just went to Ramos Studio and x
Speaker 1: Alex dot Ramis Studios. Yeah, we're going with Ramos there either,
Speaker 1: Famous Ramos Is Alex from now on. UM, Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to send us a confusing email or at
Speaker 1: least confusing with a confusing U r L. We love
Speaker 1: those because Chuck loves to try him on air and
Speaker 1: then hilarity ensues. You can wrap it up, spank it
Speaker 1: on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart radiovisit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.