What was the first medication to be sold in the form of water-soluble tablets?

No doctor’s office or medicine cabinet is complete without a supply of aspirin, the world’s most popular and, in many ways, miraculous painkiller. This multi-purpose drug was first stabilized and patented during a three-year span from 1897 to 1900 by Felix Hoffman, a chemist with Friedrich Bayer & Co. in Germany.

Bayer trademarked the name “Aspirin” in 1899 and quickly began a worldwide marketing campaign. Hoffman was promoted to director of pharmaceutical marketing. Bayer named the product using “A” for acetyl chloride, “spir” for spiraea ulmaria, the latin name for the plant that they derived salicylic acid from, and “in” as a popular suffix for medicines.

First, Bayer began distributing aspirin to doctors to give to their patients in a powdered formula. In 1900, Bayer introduced water-soluble tablets, representing the first-ever medication to be sold in this form. In 1915, prescriptions for aspirin became unnecessary. Before long, aspirin was the most popular drug in the world.

Today, aspirin finds a multitude of uses, including the treatment of migraines, muscle pain and inflammation, arthritis, and even some cancers. In the United States alone, men, women, and children are estimated to ingest at least 15 million aspirin tablets per year.