The German Genius

successful drug the world has known.
    T HE M OST S UCCESSFUL D RUG THE W ORLD H AS K NOWN
     
    Conceptually, the drug was the work of three men—Heinrich Dreser, Arthur Eichengrün, and Felix Hoffmann, though it was Hoffmann who carried out the crucial experiments.
    In the course of his literature searches, as he later told the story, Hoffmann came across several references to the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid, or ASA, which, it was claimed, reduced the unpleasant gastric side effects of salicylic acid, the traditional remedy for rheumatic fever and arthritis. Hoffmann then began to repeat some of these experiments, varying the substances. Thus it was that, according to a note in his laboratory journal, on August 10, 1897, he stumbled on a way to make ASA that removed virtually all its gastric side effects. 32 As was now traditional, the pharmacology department tested the substance and Eichengrün found it effective. But Dreser objected, insisting that salicylic acid “enfeebles the heart” and ASA was rejected.
    Matters were complicated by the fact that, in the same fortnight in which he discovered ASA, Hoffmann discovered another substance that Dreser believed had much greater potential: heroin. Diacetylmorphine, the full chemical name of heroin, was not in itself new. It was discovered in 1874 by the Englishman C. R. Alder Wright, who had been investigating opium derivatives at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Dreser had come across Alder Wright’s written report in the literature and, since morphine had traditionally been used as a painkiller and in the treatment of respiratory diseases like tuberculosis, and because another opium derivative, codeine, was also used as cough treatment, he charged Hoffmann with making more experiments. “Two weeks after he had formulated ASA, Hoffmann successfully synthesised diacetylmorphine, in the process earning the curious distinction of ‘discovering’ in the same fortnight one of the most useful substances known to medicine and one of the most deadly.” 33
    Dreser began testing the new substance on everything from frogs to rabbits and then on himself and other human volunteers. These volunteers found that the drug made them feel so “heroic” that the substance’s brand name “suggested itself.” Following further clinical trials, Dreser told the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians in 1898 that it was “ten times more effective as a cough remedy than codeine but with only one tenth of its toxic effects.” He added, for good measure, that it was “a completely non-habit-forming and safe family drug [and] would solve the problem of morphine addiction…” 34 Dreser even had plans to promote the drug as a remedy for baby colic and influenza.
    Meanwhile Eichengrün went behind Dreser’s back. First, he tried ASA on himself. Discovering that it had no apparent effect on his heart, he sent off batches of the drug to Bayer’s representative in Berlin, who had good contacts with the general practitioners there, and arranged discreet trials. Within weeks, the doctors were returning “glowing assessments,” far better than anyone at Bayer dared hope: ASA had few unpleasant side effects, and on top of that it was discovered to be an analgesic. The drug was put into production. 35
    Which meant there was the need for a name. Because salicylic acid could be derived from the meadowsweet plant, an abbreviation of the plant’s Latin genus, Spiraea , was suggested. Someone else suggested that the letter “a” should be added at the front, to acknowledge acetylation. Many drugs at the time ended with “in,” simply because it was easy to say. Which is how “aspirin” came to be. 36
    T HE R ISE OF THE M ICROSCOPE
     
    The rise of the laboratory would not have been possible without a parallel rise in that most useful of laboratory instruments—the microscope. Developments in optics took place in the nineteenth century in France, Holland, Britain, and the United States—but three of the leading figures were German: Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe, and Ernst Leitz.
    Carl Friedrich Zeiss was born in 1816 in Weimar and studied mathematics, physics, optics, and mineralogy at the University of Jena before going on to work under Professor Matthias Schleiden—the codiscoverer of the importance of the cell—at the Physiological Institute there. Zeiss opened his own shop in 1846 and did well, expanding steadily so that, in the first twenty years, the company produced