Jewish Invention Myths: Aspirin
The claim that jews invented the common painkiller Aspirin is an interesting case in how jewish invention myths take shape. The reason why is that the claim itself is very recent and dates from one scientist named Walter Sneader of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland in 1999 which was then written up and published in the British Medical Journal in 2000.
It has only been picked up by few people claiming jews invented things they in fact didn’t.
‘MNews’ is one of them as they claim that:
‘Arthur Ernst Eichengrün – Aspirin
Chemist Arthur Eichengrün invented aspirin, a non-flammable movie film, acetate rayon fiber, and more than 40 other inventions.’ (1)
Traditionally Aspirin is credited to a German chemist named Felix Hoffmann who invented it in 1897-1898. (2)
Let’s also look at specifically what Sneader’s counterclaim is. The first part of Sneader’s argument is a linguistic speculation about a potential double meaning in Hoffmann’s official scientific journal in 1897-1898. (3) This in itself holds little water as it is mere speculation and rests upon a potential alternative reading of his work but in and of itself it simply isn’t evidence.
The true thrust of Sneader’s argument is actually found in his speculations around Eichengrün’s 1944 claim (first published in 1949) that he not Hoffmann invented Aspirin in 1897-1898.
To be fair and open I reproduce Sneader’s argument at length:
‘In a paper published in Pharmazie in 1949, Eichengrün claimed that he had instructed Hoffmann to synthesise acetylsalicylic acid and that the latter had done so without knowing the purpose of the work. Five years earlier, while in Theresienstadt concentration camp, he had typed a letter (now in the Bayer archives) with wording similar to his 1949 paper. Eichengrün wrote that his objective had been to obtain a salicylate that would not give rise to the adverse effects (gastric irritation, nausea, or tinnitus) frequently associated with sodium salicylate. He was present when the derivatives of salicylic acid were tested by Dreser and came to the conclusion that acetylsalicylic acid was superior to all the other compounds. At a management meeting, Eichengrün called for clinical studies to be initiated, but Dreser used his right of veto as head of the pharmacology division. He believed, mistakenly, that the drug was harmful to the heart.
Convinced of the potential of acetylsalicylic acid, Eichengrün tested it on himself, experiencing no ill effects. He stated that he then surreptitiously gave a supply of it to his colleague Dr Felix Goldmann, who then recruited physicians to evaluate the drug in strict secrecy. Their reports were most encouraging. Tinnitus was rare, while the antirheumatic effects were unmistakable. But there was more—a dentist had given the drug to a patient with a raised temperature as well as toothache. Hardly was he out of the chair before he exclaimed, “My toothache's gone!” Such a rapid onset of analgesia was unique. After a similar response was confirmed in other patients, Goldmann sent a report to the Bayer management. According to Eichengrün, when Dreser was asked to comment, he scribbled on it, “This is the usual loud-mouthing of Berlin—the product has no value.”
Eichengrün goes on to tell us that Carl Duisberg, the renowned head of research for Bayer, had ordered Dreser's results to be checked by an independent pharmacologist. This intervention might explain why Hoffmann synthesised stable, pure acetylsalicylic acid on 10 August 1897. If the meaning of the last sentence in Hoffmann's report is that acetylsalicylic acid was already under test at that time, it would be consistent with all that Eichengrün has written. Had acetylsalicylic acid been tested along with the other salicylic acid derivatives in April 1897, there would have been no written record of its original synthesis, since Hoffmann did not write any reports between 13 March 1896 and 5 May 1897. Significantly, in none of his laboratory reports did he mention the synthesis of any of the other salicylates known to have been tested by Dreser. Presumably they were prepared for evaluation in April 1897.
In his 1949 paper Eichengrün went on to claim that acetylsalicylic acid was sent to several leading clinics for expert assessment. Confirmation of this claim is found in the first published clinical report on aspirin by Kurt Witthauer of the Deaconess Hospital in Halle, which appeared in the April 1899 issue of Die Heilkunde. Revealingly, Witthauer remarked, “After long hesitation, the factory was able to be convinced by my favourable experiences to bring aspirin on to the market.” Further light is thrown on this statement by Friedrich Fischer, the head of the Elberfeld pharmaceutical laboratory in 1897, when he wrote that Witthauer had energetically pushed for the introduction of the drug owing to its excellent success in the clinic. It should be noted that Witthauer stated that he had received the new salicylate compound nearly one year earlier—that is, around April 1898.’ (4)
Reading the above there is a problem with Sneader’s narrative because he is in essence reading history backwards. He assumes that the information provided in Eichengrün’s 1944 paper published in 1949 is ipso facto correct because it ties in with other known sources of the time, but this doesn’t mean that Eichengrün’s actual claim of priority is correct. There are plenty of alternative possibilities for why Eichengrün could have a detailed knowledge of the timing of the discovery and scientific checks correct but also not have priority.
A simple one is the fact that Eichengrün is writing in 1944 some 47 years after the events he describes. It is extremely unlikely that these specific claims are based upon his memory but rather on a private diary and/or private notes that he had from the time. This would make it very easy for Eichengrün to be accurate on the detail of the timeline and scientific checks performed but also assign himself priority in a simple narrative because he claimed (incorrectly as it happens and he was also junior to Hoffmann in terms of seniority based on time served; as I have explained at the end of this article) that was Hoffmann’s supervisor at Bayer A.G. at the time so would is in a viable position to claim such because he was around Hoffmann at the time at Bayer A.G. when aspirin was first synthesized.
The year (1944) when Eichengrün wrote this paper is also important as well as the fact that it was published post-war in 1949 as Sneader inadvertently tells us in trying to buttress his case since he can clearly see the difficulty and gap in his own thesis.
Sneader writes:
‘Why did Eichengrün wait 15 years before refuting what had been written in 1934 about the role of Hoffmann? The answer may be found by considering Eichengrün's situation at that time. After the introduction of aspirin, he had developed not only several more drugs but also cellulose acetate, acetate silk, and acetate safety film before leaving Bayer in 1908 to establish his own factory in Berlin. There, he produced flame resistant materials based on acetyl cellulose and also pioneered the process of injection moulding of plastics. Consequently, he enjoyed the affluent life style of a successful industrialist, yet because he was a Jew all this was put at risk after the Nazi party gained power.
By the time the claim that Hoffmann had initiated the development of aspirin was published, the Nazis had banned Jews from the civil service and from independent positions in the professions and in economic life. Even as a prominent industrialist, Eichengrün was not exempt from their attentions. He was forced to take an associate into his company to avoid loss of contracts from state enterprises. A low profile was the order of the day, but that was not enough to prevent his company being forcibly transferred to another owner in 1938. His marriage to an “Aryan” wife enabled him to retain his freedom until 1944, when at the age of 76 he was interned for 14 months in Theresienstadt, languishing there until its liberation by the Soviet Army.
During the Nazi era, Eichengrün was in no position to issue a public rebuttal of what had been published about Hoffmann. Some insight into his feelings at that time is given by a paragraph in his 1949 paper: “In 1941, there stood in the Hall of Honour of the chemical section of the German Museum in Munich a showcase filled with white crystals, with the inscription, ‘Aspirin: inventors Dreser and Hoffmann’. Dreser had nothing whatsoever to do with the discovery, and Hoffmann carried out my chemical instructions in the first place without knowing the aim of the work. Next to the showcase was a similar one filled with acetylcellulose, today also a product of worldwide importance, whose discovery by me it is impossible to doubt since it was established in a series of German patents from 1901 to 1920. It was simply described by the expression ‘Acetylcellulose—Cellit’; they had refrained from naming the inventor. But, at the main entrance to the museum there hung a large sign which forbade non-Aryans from entering this institute! Those who understand will read between the lines.”
In his letter from Theresienstadt, Eichengrün concluded a similar paragraph with a different sentence: “To what influences this omission is to be attributed, can be only assumed.” There can be little doubt that he felt that he had been written out of history because he was a Jew. Such historical revisionism was not unknown in the Nazi era.
Two years after the war ended, Eichengrün celebrated his 80th birthday amid glowing tributes in German scientific journals. He died in Berlin on 23 December 1949, in the same month that his account of the discovery of aspirin was published. He was spared from knowing that it would remain largely ignored for another half century.’ (5)
So, let’s put this in perspective by breaking it down into a series of statements:
1) Eichengrün leaves Bayer A.G. in 1908 to create his own company in Berlin which is a success.
2) Eichengrün leads a life of luxury as a prominent jewish industrialist from 1908 to 1938.
3) Hoffmann claims priority for the invention of Aspirin in 1897-1898 in 1934. Eichengrün does not contest this or mention a counterclaim to anyone.
4) In 1938 Eichengrün is forced to handover ownership of his company to a non-jew because of his jewishness.
5) Eichengrün is able to avoid the ‘Holocaust’ completely till early 1944 when he is sent to the Theresienstadt death camp.
6) Sometime in 1944 (but likely before he was arrested and imprisoned in the Theresienstadt death camp despite Sneader’s implied suggestion that he wrote this all up there) Eichengrün writes a paper claiming priority for the invention of aspirin over Hoffmann.
7) After his release from the Theresienstadt death camp in May 1945 Eichengrün publishes his 1944 paper in 1949 claiming priority for the invention of aspirin over Hoffmann before dying later that year. Eichengrün’s claim of priority is quietly allowed to drop.
When we break down Sneader’s claim we can already see that there is an obvious counter-explanation which Sneader makes no attempt to account for. This is when we suggest that Eichengrün was the malicious aggressor in 1944 not Hoffmann in 1934.
This is supported by the oddity that Eichengrün failed to claim (or mention his alleged) priority over Hoffmann between 1934 and 1938. Sneader’s claim that this was ‘impossible’ due to the ‘anti-Semitic nature’ of the Third Reich is more of an excuse for Eichengrün’s strange inaction than an argument. This is because Eichengrün did have alternative options: he could have left Germany and lodged a claim of priority elsewhere as the jewish academic émigré from Germany Raphael Strauss did in 1934 against Wilhelm Grau’s alleged plagiarism of his research notes on the history of the jews of Regensburg. (6)
Eichengrün elected to stay in the Third Reich of his volition from 1933 till his detention in Theresienstadt in early 1944 in (presumably) increasingly impoverished circumstances, but as we can see this in itself is not an argument for Eichengrün’s priority for the invention of aspirin nor is it an excuse for his non-assertion of it from 1934 to 1944. The fact that he didn’t assert it is puzzling and once we strip away the ‘Nazi anti-Semitism’ excuse used by Sneader it becomes readily apparent that Eichengrün must have had some other reason for not asserting his priority before 1944 and that reason is probably the simplest: he didn’t have priority because he didn’t invent aspirin.
However, two things happened between 1938 and 1944: Eichengrün’s fortune was likely drying up due to the forced sale of his business to a non-jewish German in 1938 and the Third Reich was manifestly on the defensive and losing the Second World War by early 1944 which become more and more apparent as that year continued.
Now put yourself in Eichengrün’s shoes: based on Sneader’s narrative he clearly liked to live a luxurious lifestyle which had likely come to an end by early 1944 and the people who he could reasonably (and correctly) blame were losing the Second World War. Thus, it is not too far a stretch to suggest that Eichengrün was searching for a way to rebuild his financial fortunes and hit upon an old invention he had been around in 1897-1898 that was selling incredibly well in the United States: aspirin. (7)
Eichengrün checks his old diaries and notes from 1897-1898 when he was with Felix Hoffmann at Bayer A.G. and finds he has enough information/facts to make a plausible narrative/claim with enough of a grey area to argue for a priority claim of invention for aspirin and thus get significant amounts of back (and then ongoing) royalties which would likely be awarded in part because of his status as an ‘unjustly persecuted jew’ in the Third Reich.
Eichengrün then writes up this narrative and stores it in a safe place (probably with his non-jewish wife) – it is interesting that Sneader doesn’t note this explanatory gap in his timeline (i.e., why Eichengrün wrote his paper in 1944 not after the war and also why he took four years after the end of the Second World War to publish it) – only to publish it as soon as he can find a journal that will take his article but Eichengrün dies before he can fully put his plan into action.
This explanation is naturally speculative, but it does fit the facts a lot better than Sneader’s alleged linguistic double-meaning in Hoffmann’s notes, failure to note Eichengrün’s lifestyle as a potential reason for his failure to assert priority, use of the excuse of ‘Nazi anti-Semitism’ for Eichengrün’s failure to assert priority from 1934 till 1944 and failure to attempt to account for the gap in the publication of Eichengrün’s claims between 1945 and early 1949.
He also fails to consider any other motive for Eichengrün’s behaviour other than honest credit seeking on Eichengrün’s part when -as I have demonstrated – his own narrative suggests a more obvious alternative in placing Eichengrün as a malicious aggressor against Hoffmann’s priority for inventing aspirin in order to rebuild his financial position via back and ongoing royalties.
I am not the only one who is sceptical of Sneader’s claims about Eichengrün’s priority for inventing aspirin either.
The ‘Science History Institute’ (who assign priority to Hoffmann not Eichengrün) write that:
‘Today there is debate as to whether this account is complete. Some evidence has surfaced that indicates that Arthur Eichengrün, another Bayer employee, played a significant role in the development of aspirin. It has been suggested that he was left out of the story as it has been told since the 1930s because he was Jewish.
Bayer applied for a German patent but was rejected: as it turned out, acetylsalicylic acid had been synthesized earlier, first by a French chemist and later by a German chemist, although unlike Hoffmann they had been unable to produce it in a pure, stable form. Regardless, the Bayer Company, recognizing that it had a potential blockbuster in aspirin, aggressively marketed the drug worldwide. In the United States, Bayer was able to obtain a patent, giving the company the monopoly on manufacturing the drug from 1900 to 1917.’ (8)
Although they understandably treat Eichengrün’s and Sneader’s claims with kid gloves; their point is clear in that they regard Sneader’s theory as being without significant evidential foundation but because of the sensitive political nature of the history involved. They mention it as a speculative possibility with ‘some evidence’ (aka being intentionally vague) and nothing more.
Eichengrün and Hoffmann’s old employer Bayer A.G. were far less circumspect in their response to Sneader’s claims in September 1999 when they wrote that:
‘On August 10, 1897, Felix Hoffmann synthesized acetylsalicylic acid (ASS), the active ingredient in Aspirin®, by significantly improving the tolerability of the already known and common pain substance salicylic acid through acetylation. This is clear from the numerous documents available from the Bayer AG archives from this time. The claim that it was not Hoffmann, but his colleague Eichengrün. It cannot be proven that Arthur Eichengrün is responsible for the development.
Dr. Felix Hoffmann was also not a subordinate employee of Dr. Arthur Eichengrün, but his hierarchically equal colleague. The Scottish scientist Dr. Walter Sneader giving a lecture at the Royal Society of Chemistry in Edinburgh. He deduced from this that Hoffmann was working on the instructions of Eichengrün and that Eichengrün must therefore be considered the actual developer of the active ingredient in Aspirin®.
However, this is contradicted by numerous documents that detail the work and employment relationships of Dr. Hoffmann and Dr. Eichengrün. Afterwards, Dr. Eichengrün, who joined the company one and a half years later than Dr. Hoffmann, was still in his one-year probationary period, when Hoffmann described the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid in his laboratory journal on August 10, 1897. And in the years that followed, the careers of Eichengrün and Hoffmann ran parallel.
There was no managerial relationship between the two. However, Eichengrün was the supervisor of a chemist named Fritz Hofmann. This similarity of names has already caused confusion.
The development of the active ingredient Aspirin® was not attributed to Felix Hoffmann until 1934, as claimed, but already on August 10, 1897, as the entry in the laboratory journal confirms. The original of the journal is available to Bayer.
In the American patent specification for acetylsalicylic acid from 1899, Hoffmann is also listed as an “inventor”. This is what Dr. Eichengrün never objected. Eichengrün left the “farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co.” in 1908. to run your own company in Berlin. In a Bayer chronicle that appeared in 1918, Eichengrün describes the successes of Bayer's pharmaceutical department in great detail and mentions a number of his own works. However, he does not associate his name with Aspirin®, but rather attributes it to Felix Hoffmann.
It is said that the National Socialists threatened Eichengrün with dismissal from his company. However, this cannot be related to the authorship of the ASS development, because at that time Eichengrün had not yet made any claims to it. He did so only in 1949, at the age of 82, and more than 50 years after the synthesis of ASS.
As Walter Sneader rightly points out, Dr. Eichengrün made a name for itself through a large number (there were exactly 47) patents. There would therefore have been no reason to withhold recognition from him for the synthesis of ASA, especially since the success of the substance was in no way predictable at the time - unlike in 1949.
Like every other researcher, Eichengrün shared in the economic success of his inventions. However, he never received any inventor's royalties for the acetylation of salicylic acid, and he never claimed any. Like Walter Sneader, several attempts have been made in the past to synthesize the ASS attributed to Eichengrün. It was always argued that the supposedly denied recognition of this achievement was due to Eichengrün's Jewish descent. However, new findings or even evidence for this thesis were always lacking.
In 1897, Eichengrün and Hoffmann were researchers at the “farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co.” It would have made no difference to the company or to the success of the Aspirin® brand whether one or the other was considered the first to succeed in acetylating salicylic acid for the first time in a chemically pure and durable form.’ (9)
Bayer A.G.’s response to Sneader rips apart his argument because they document that Eichengrün lied (or simply mis-remembered; he was in his 80s) in his 1944 paper published in 1949 and confused his colleague (and the inventor of Aspirin) Felix Hoffmann with his direct subordinate Fritz Hofmann in order to make his claim fit the narrative. It is a serious material mistake by Sneader in his assertion of Eichengrün’s claim but it is forgivable given Eichengrün’s claim and the similarity of the names especially in abbreviated form (i.e., F. Hoffmann versus F. Hofmann).
We also note Bayer A.G.’s two points that Felix Hoffmann was listed as the inventor of aspirin in the American patent application in 1899 and that Eichengrün himself credit Hoffmann in an article in 1918 more or less destroys Sneader’s argument completely and it is little wonder he doesn’t address these in his article in the British Medical Journal over a year after Bayer A.G.’s press release (even allowing for a significant delay in publication).
Bayer A.G. are also absolutely crystal clear that there is no evidence whatsoever in their scientific records that Eichengrün contributed to the creation of aspirin and that his 1944/1949 claim is without any merit whatsoever. This would also explain why the claim of priority was quietly dropped not as a conspiracy against Eichengrün ‘because he was jewish’ but because Eichengrün’s claims were without foundation, and it would be rather unkind (and politically inexpedient) to expose a recently deceased ‘jewish victim of the Third Reich’ as either senile and/or a fraudster.
Therefore we can see that Arthur Eichengrün didn’t invent aspirin at all.
Felix Hoffmann did.
Scratch another jewish invention myth!
References
(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(2) https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/felix-hoffmann/
(3) Walter Sneader, 2000, ‘The discovery of aspirin: a reappraisal’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 321, December, pp. 1591-1594 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119266/)
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) On the debate on this see Alan E. Steinweis, 2008, ‘Studying the Jew: Scholarly Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany’, 2nd Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, but Strauss’ claim against Grau is also mentioned in detail in Raphael Strauss, 1939, ‘Regensberg and Augsburg’, 1st Edition, The Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, p. x
(7) https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/felix-hoffmann/
(8) Ibid.
(9) https://web.archive.org/web/20070928132933/http://pressearchiv-kubitschek.www.de/pharma-presse/presseerklaerungen/texte/pharma_medikamente/bayer/bayer_110999.html