experience to be a powerful astringent, and very efficacious in curing anguish and intermitting disorders," wrote the Reverend Edmund Stone to the presi- dent of the British Royal Society in 1763. Although he did not know it, Stone had discovered salicylic acid-better known today as aspirin.
Weissmann, a professor of medicine at New York University, reports that "Ameri- cans consume 16,000 tons of aspirin tab- lets a year-80 million pills-and spend about $2 billion a year for nonprescription...