Antipyresis
The antipyretic is the symptomatic treatment of fever with medication and / or cooling external applications.
history
Even in pre-Christian times, people with a fever were externally cooled. Willow leaves and bark were also used by the ancient Egyptians and Assyrian doctors to relieve fever and pain. This was also recommended by Hippocrates . Willow bark contains salicylic acid . The ancient Romans, the ancient Chinese, the American indigenous peoples and South African Khoi Khoi knew their pain relieving and fever reducing properties.
In 1849 the French pharmacist Henri Leroux isolated pure salicin from the willow for the first time and showed its antipyretic properties. In 1858 the Italian chemist Raffaele Piria hydrolyzed salicin to salicylic alcohol and salicylic acid . In 1874 the German Hermann Kolbe described the chemical structure of salicylic acid and produced it for the first time industrially as sodium salicylate, which quickly became popular for the treatment of a number of inflammatory diseases, but tasted unpleasant. This was improved in 1897 by the German chemist Felix Hoffmann , an employee of Bayer AG , when he acetylated the starting material to acetylsalicylic acid , which was patented as aspirin in 1899.
In the 19th century, a number of other antipyretic agents were discovered and introduced into medicine: phenacetin in 1887 , acetaminophen in 1888 , pyramidone in 1896 , phenylbutazone in 1949 , indomethacin in 1963 . Until 1971, little was known about the mechanisms by which acetylsalicylic acid and the other drugs were effective. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that antipyretic agents were recognized as inhibitors of cyclooxygenases , making their effects more understandable on a biochemical level.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c P. A. Mackowiak: Brief history of antipyretic therapy. In: Clinical Infectious Diseases . Volume 31 Suppl 5, October 2000, pp. S154-S156, ISSN 1058-4838 . doi: 10.1086 / 317510 . PMID 11113017 .
