I was showing a neighbor around the shop yesterday and although she wasn't much interested in the tools, she was fascinated by the different kinds of wood. (ooohhh, pretty)
Note: I think many people believe the lumber they see at Home Depot is the only kind of wood there is.
Anyway, she picked up a scrap of jatoba off the band saw and asked what it was. I told her it was "aspirin wood".
She said she didn't know aspirin came from trees. And I replied, "I don't know where aspirin comes from, but that's the kind of aspirin that prevents the headache of cutting my thumb off on that saw..."
Thanks for the link Larry, I'm tickled every time I learn something new.
I don't know anything about working with willow, but now if I ever find myself in possession of some, I'll make myself some real "aspirin wood" push blocks. And I'm sure I'll grin every time I use them.
The salicylic acid that is available in Willow bark, Oil of Wintergreen and Aspirin are very similar in chemical composition and metabolic effect.
In 1859 a German chemist, Hermann Kolbe, synthesized salicylic acid but the result was found to be too irritating to the stomach.
In 1899, Felix Hoffman, another German chemist, who had been searching for a solution (sic) to his Father's arthritis symptoms, used Acetylsalicylic Acid, after having tried Phenyl Salicylate and Sodium Salicylate.
Herr Hoffman was an employee of the Bayer Company.
To this day, what we call Aspirin is essentially AcetylSalicylic Acid, with buffers and other crap included in the mix.
I am actually more interested in the first guy who got the connection between the Willow and the ameliorative effect - that sumbitch was an observational genius.
Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
I've heard that keeping a small piece of willow in one's mouth was a common method for laborers to stave off thirst while working in pre-Igloo cooler times. If that's true, then the degree of genius required may not have been quite so high.
I seem to recall that willow bark tea was used for general relief from aches and pains by pioneer folk - and wonder if they brought that bit of medical technology from Europe or learned it from the "native" north americans...
Ya know, Morris, we are all, almost without exception, enamoured (spelling reflective of current reading - so fugg off) of the "specific genius" theory of discovery.
I guess we all figger (spelling reflective of upbringing - so fugg off) that what really happens is a happy repeated accident, that eventually gets noticed. A guy gets handed a willow branch to bite on whilst they pull out the arrow. After the two hour surgery, he says tha tit didn't really hurt as much as he thought it would.
Repeated on a more intelligent level, some pre-sentient dude noticed that it didn't hurt so much, while he was being treated for a hurt ankle, taken on while trying to turn the pre-upright-posture version of the double play - if he sucked on this piece of tthis tree, rather than that.
Happy accidents prolly have more to do with the advancement of science than all the most carefully laid plans of both mice and men. (cf: unnatural rubber).
But, ya know, once it got within the purview of them little German Scientist fellas, and them having access to a pretty decent backlog of writings on more or less the same stuff; the Happy Accident could rightfully be starting to be called Science.
Gott bless 'em.
Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
Agreed. Some of these "happy accidents" would seem to be almost no-brainers; and some would seem to require multiple generations of exacting empirical observation and analysis by incredibly bright, intellectually-disciplined individuals.
One of the more interesting stories tells about an African tribal group that used a locally-sourced mud quite effectively in curing what visiting medical teams recognized as skin cancer. Turned out the mud had a high-pitchblende content.
Who would have imagined that radiation therapy would be first used by a low-tech society with only a verbal tradition?
One gets tempted to answer "He's one in a milliard" ("milliard" == Brit. term for 1,000 million, what those in the U.S. call a 'billion' -- which, to the Brits, means a 'million million'.)
Prolly about the same percentage of folks who woulda thought that the first reactor would go critical under the home stands of the University of Chicago foosball stadium.
That always seemed odd to me.
But, what do I know?
Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret) Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
Infinite number of monkeys. The marvels of natural selection.
As to the case in hand, I favor the fact that starving folks made meals of what they could. Kamchadals ate the contents of the reindeer (caribou) rumen to help stave off scurvy.
On Mon, 5 Apr 2004 08:34:33 -0400, "George" scribbled:
The Gwich'in (Loucheux) people of the northern Yukon, Alaska & NWT still consider the stomach contents of caribou a delicacy, not that I've had the pleasure of trying it.
Luigi Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address
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