60 free Aspirin trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This aspirin trivia quiz covers the world's most familiar pill from willow bark to the modern heart-attack tablet. The easy questions are the ones anyone with a medicine cabinet should manage: the chemical name, the German company that launched it, the tree that gave us its precursor and the childhood illness that keeps it off the paediatric shelf. Then it digs into the surprising history: the Oxfordshire chaplain who chewed willow bark in 1758, the meadowsweet behind the 'spir' in the name, the Bayer chemists who fell out over the credit, the drug Bayer branded 'heroin' the same year, the phenol plot with Thomas Edison's factory, the trademark auctioned off after the First World War and bought back for a billion dollars, the Californian doctor and his aspirin chewing gum, the 1971 Nature paper that explained how it works, and the guideline reversal of 2019. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on aspirin, its history, Felix Hoffmann, Reye syndrome and Bayer before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our medicine, chemistry and inventions quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Aspirin is the genericised trademark for which chemical compound?
Acetylsalicylic acid
It is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug that also suppresses platelet function.
Q 02Which tree's bark contains salicin, an aspirin precursor used for at least 2,400 years?
Willow
Salicin is metabolised in the gut into salicylic acid.
Q 03Which chemist first made aspirin's active compound in 1853?
Charles Frédéric Gerhardt
It took another 50 years, mostly at Bayer, to establish the structure and make it in a pure, stable form.
Q 04Which German company named and launched Aspirin in 1899?
Bayer
It was then a dye and drug firm; its cross logo followed in 1904.
Q 05Which Bayer chemist is officially credited with first making the drug in a pure, stable form in 1897?
Felix Hoffmann
His colleague Arthur Eichengrün later claimed Hoffmann had merely followed his research plan.
Q 06Which Bayer scientist claimed in 1949 that aspirin would never have reached the market without him?
Arthur Eichengrün
Historian Walter Sneader supported his claim; Bayer countered that he and Hoffmann held equal positions.
Q 07Which Bayer pharmacology head first blocked aspirin over fears it weakened the heart?
Heinrich Dreser
He was the only one of the three to receive royalties, and his report omitted Hoffmann and Eichengrün entirely.
Q 08Which notorious drug did the same Bayer chemist synthesise soon after aspirin, in the same year?
Heroin
Bayer branded it 'heroin' for the heroic feeling it gave the testers.
Q 09The 'spir' in Aspirin comes from Spirsäure, German for salicylic acid derived from which plant?
Meadowsweet
The plant genus was then Spiraea, now Filipendula; 'a' stands for acetyl and '-in' was a common drug suffix.
Q 10What was the runner-up name Bayer considered before settling on 'Aspirin' in January 1899?
Euspirin
Eichengrün argued that 'Eu-' (good) implied an improvement on an older drug, which Bayer wanted to avoid.
Q 11Which English chaplain told the Royal Society in 1763 of a tree bark that cured 'ague' fevers?
Edward Stone
He had tasted the bark in 1758 and noticed an astringency like Peruvian bark, used against malaria.
Q 12Which Italian chemist obtained a more potent acid from the bark extract in 1838 and named it salicylic acid?
Raffaele Piria
German chemist Karl Jacob Löwig then realised his meadowsweet extract was the same acid.
Q 13Which Scottish physician reported in The Lancet in 1876 that salicin treated acute rheumatism?
Thomas MacLagan
German scientists tried sodium salicylate with less success and worse side effects.
Q 21Which Australian brand marketed by Nicholas Proprietary became a global aspirin rival?
Aspro
Alka-Seltzer, a soluble aspirin-bicarbonate mix, also arrived between the wars.
Q 22Aspirin's popularity declined after which two rival painkillers arrived in 1956 and 1962?
Paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen
Tylenol, which did not irritate the stomach, was available without prescription by 1967.
Q 23Which California doctor first noticed aspirin's anti-clotting effect in 1950 via patients chewing Aspergum?
Lawrence Craven
Tonsillectomy patients using lots of the aspirin gum were bleeding heavily; he began prescribing daily aspirin.
Q 14Bayer's systematic drug search was inspired by the success of which 1886 acetanilide fever remedy?
Antifebrine
Carl Duisberg's chemists went on to develop Phenacetin and the sedatives Sulfonal and Trional.
Q 15Why did Bayer initially market Aspirin only to doctors rather than to the public?
It followed the 'ethical drug' standard opposed to patent medicines
Small packets went to doctors, pharmacists and hospitals in 1899 with encouragement to publish results.
Q 16Where did Bayer open its American aspirin factory in 1903 to avoid import duties?
Rensselaer, New York
The plant was auctioned off during the First World War along with Bayer's US trademarks.
Q 17During WWI, German agents secretly bought surplus phenol for aspirin from which American inventor's factory?
Thomas Edison
Edison made phenol for phonograph records; the 'Great Phenol Plot' collapsed when a briefcase of documents was seized in 1915.
Q 18Which US company bought Bayer's American plant, patents and logo at auction after WWI?
Sterling Products
Bayer AG bought the US rights back in 1994 for US$1 billion.
Q 19How much did Bayer AG pay in 1994 to regain the US rights to its own name, cross logo and Bayer Aspirin?
US$1 billion
The Aspirin trademark remains valid in Canada and much of the world.
Q 20Which pandemic of 1918 cemented aspirin's reputation as one of the most powerful drugs of its era?
The Spanish flu
Some even believed Germans had planted the flu in Bayer aspirin as a war tactic.
Q 24Which pharmacologist showed in 1971 that aspirin works by blocking prostaglandin production?
John Vane
He worked with Priscilla Piper at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Q 25Which honour did the pharmacologist who discovered aspirin's mechanism share in 1982?
The Nobel in Physiology or Medicine
He shared it with Sune Bergström and Bengt Samuelsson.
Q 26Aspirin permanently disables which enzyme, unlike ibuprofen and diclofenac which inhibit it reversibly?
Cyclooxygenase (COX)
It attaches an acetyl group to a serine in the enzyme's active site, a so-called suicide inhibition.
Q 27Low-dose aspirin prevents clots by blocking which platelet substance for their 8-9 day life?
Thromboxane A2
That is why it is used to prevent second heart attacks and strokes.
Q 28Which statistician's mid-1980s meta-analysis convinced the FDA that aspirin prevents heart attacks?
Richard Peto
By the end of the 1980s aspirin was widely used as a preventive.
Q 29Why is aspirin not generally recommended for children with viral infections?
The risk of Reye syndrome
The FDA required warning labels on all aspirin from 1986.
Q 30Which Australian pathologist first described the syndrome that bears his name in 1963?
Douglas Reye
Diagnoses fell sharply in the 1980s as aspirin warnings and genetic testing spread.