Gastric mucosal damage by aspirin.

Abstract

After aspirin was introduced by the Bayer Company of Germany in 1899, it rapidly gained an established place in medical therapy. Its potent antiinflammatory, antipyretic, and analgesic properties, together with the absence of obvious side effects, made its success certain. As well as becoming a first-line drug for the general relief of severe pain and for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid disease, it has become the most widely used of all household remedies for a variety of minor ailments. In the United Kingdom and the U. s., it is marketed in at least 320 proprietary preparations,1 with consumption in the U. S. estimated at the staggering figure of 20 billion..