Aspirin Trivia
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59 free Aspirin trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 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 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Aspirin is the genericised trademark for which chemical compound?
Acetylsalicylic acid
Acetylsalicylic acid. The name hides its parent: once swallowed, the body strips the drug back down to salicylic acid, the harsher old remedy it was built to replace.
Q 02Which tree's bark contains salicin, the natural compound that set chemists on the road to aspirin?
Willow
Willow. Salicin carries the tree's name, from salix, the Latin for willow; a Munich professor drew the bitter compound out of the bark in 1828.
Q 03Rasputin's healing fame may rest on keeping aspirin, then a new cure-all, away from a royal heir with which condition?
Haemophilia
Haemophilia. Aspirin thins the blood, a side effect unknown at the time, so by insisting the court's remedies be kept away Rasputin may have removed the very thing that was making the boy's bleeding worse.
Q 04Which profession supplied all 22,000 volunteers for the landmark 1980s American trial of aspirin against heart attacks?
Doctors
Doctors. The Physicians' Health Study gave half of them aspirin every other day, and that arm was stopped ahead of schedule: those taking it were having 44% fewer heart attacks.
Q 05Which German chemist is officially credited with first making aspirin in a pure, stable form in 1897?
Felix Hoffmann
Felix Hoffmann. A former colleague later insisted Hoffmann had merely carried out his instructions without knowing their purpose, and who deserves the credit is still argued over.
Q 06Chemist Arthur Eichengrün first typed his claim to have directed aspirin's invention in 1944, while held where?
A Nazi concentration camp
A Nazi concentration camp, Theresienstadt, was where he typed it, in a letter now in the company archives. He survived to publish the claim in 1949, and a historian's 2000 archive study backed him, though the firm disputes it.
Q 07Aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen all belong to which class of drugs?
NSAIDs
NSAIDs are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, a label coined to set them apart from corticosteroids, the other big family that calms inflammation. American law makes every packet spell the abbreviation out.
Q 08Which notorious drug did the chemist credited with aspirin also synthesise within two weeks of it in 1897?
Heroin
Heroin went on sale in 1898 as a cough remedy, promoted by its maker as a non-addictive substitute for morphine.
Q 09The 'spir' in Aspirin comes from Spirsäure, an old German name for salicylic acid that honours which plant?
Meadowsweet
Meadowsweet was then classed as Spiraea ulmaria, and salicylic acid drawn from its flowers took the German name Spirsäure. The plant has since been moved to the genus Filipendula.
Q 10American law makes aspirin packets carry a warning for people who have three or more of what every day?
Alcoholic drinks
Alcoholic drinks at that rate raise the chance of severe stomach bleeding from aspirin, the label must say. Acetaminophen packets carry the same three-drink line for a different organ: there the risk is liver damage.
Q 11Salicylic acid, the compound aspirin turns into inside the body, is also a staple ingredient of which products?
Acne and wart treatments
Acne and wart treatments use salicylic acid because it loosens the keratin that binds dead skin cells, so clogged or hardened layers peel away. Swallowed neat it is harsh on the stomach, the flaw aspirin was made to fix.
Q 12Scottish physician Thomas MacLagan reported in The Lancet in 1876 that the bark extract salicin relieved which illness?
Rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever, then called acute rheumatism, left patients burning hot with swollen joints. MacLagan swallowed rising doses of salicin himself to check it was safe before giving it to a patient, whose fever and pain soon eased.
Q 13Bayer's systematic drug search was inspired by the success of which 1886 acetanilide fever remedy?
Q 21Aspirin's sales slid from the 1950s as paracetamol, or acetaminophen, caught on in America under which brand name?
Tylenol
Tylenol arrived in 1955 as a children's elixir and then won over adults because it did not irritate the stomach the way aspirin can.
Q 22California GP Lawrence Craven spotted aspirin's blood-thinning effect when tonsillectomy patients bled heavily after overusing which aspirin-laced product?
Chewing gum
Chewing gum laced with aspirin was what his tonsil patients used for the pain, and the heaviest users bled the most. Craven went on to put thousands of men on daily aspirin and reported no heart attacks, yet was ignored for decades.
Q 23In 1971 British pharmacologist John Vane showed that aspirin works by stopping the body from making which compounds?
Antifebrine
Antifebrine was acetanilide, a dye-works chemical found to cool fevers after a pharmacy mix-up. Its sales sent Bayer's research chief hunting through his own firm's dye waste for medicines.
Q 14Why did Bayer at first refuse to advertise Aspirin to the public?
It was thought unethical
It was thought unethical: respectable 'ethical' drugs were promoted only to doctors, and pitching a remedy straight to patients was the mark of quack patent medicines. Doctors were urged to shun anything advertised that way.
Q 15In what form was aspirin first supplied to hospitals in 1899, a year before its maker launched it as tablets?
A white powder
A white powder was all that hospitals and clinics received at first. Tablets followed in 1900, and the easier dosing spread the drug so fast that by 1915 it was on sale without a prescription.
Q 16During 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 17Which photography company owned the American rights to Bayer Aspirin from 1988 until it quit the drug business in 1994?
Kodak
Kodak had bought Sterling Drug, the firm that won the brand at a government auction of seized German assets after the First World War. When the film giant retreated to photography, the name went back to its German founder within weeks.
Q 18How much did Bayer AG pay in 1994 to regain the US rights to its own name, cross logo and Bayer Aspirin?
US$1 billion
US$1 billion bought back a name that had been seized as enemy property in the First World War and auctioned off. For three-quarters of a century the German firm could not sell aspirin under its own name in America.
Q 19Which pandemic cemented aspirin's reputation as one of the most powerful drugs of its era?
The Spanish flu
The Spanish flu of 1918 bred a rumour that the enemy-invented tablets carried flu germs; New York's health department lab-tested shop-bought aspirin and found nothing wrong.
Q 20Which American remedy for upset stomachs, launched in 1931, was built around a dose of aspirin?
Alka-Seltzer
Alka-Seltzer pairs aspirin for the head with an antacid for the stomach, which is why drinkers soon adopted it as a hangover cure. Its 'Plop, plop, fizz, fizz' jingle became one of the best known in advertising.
Prostaglandins
Prostaglandins are hormone-like compounds that raise pain, fever and swelling, so shutting down their production explained all three of aspirin's main effects in one stroke.
Q 24Which honour did the pharmacologist who discovered aspirin's mechanism share in 1982?
The Nobel in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel in Physiology or Medicine went to John Vane with the Swedes Sune Bergström and Bengt Samuelsson. His 1971 finding ended seven decades in which nobody knew how the world's most familiar pill worked.
Q 25Aspirin permanently disables which enzyme, unlike ibuprofen, which blocks it only temporarily?
Cyclooxygenase (COX)
Cyclooxygenase (COX) never recovers once aspirin has hit it, so one dose goes on working for days after the drug itself has gone. Ibuprofen lets the enzyme go again, which is why only aspirin is taken daily against clots.
Q 26A small daily aspirin helps prevent heart attacks by stopping which blood cells from clumping into clots?
Platelets
Platelets have no nucleus, so they can never rebuild the enzyme that aspirin knocks out. One small dose therefore silences each platelet it meets for the rest of its life, a week or more.
Q 27During a suspected heart attack, emergency advice is to do what with a regular aspirin tablet?
Chew it before swallowing
Chew it before swallowing, because a chewed tablet reaches the blood and starts blocking the clot sooner than one swallowed whole. Coated tablets are the wrong choice in an emergency, as they are absorbed slowly.
Q 28Why is aspirin not generally recommended for children with viral infections?
The risk of Reye syndrome
The risk of Reye syndrome, a rare swelling of the brain with liver damage, follows aspirin given for flu or chickenpox. Reported American cases peaked at 555 in 1980 and fell sharply once parents were warned.
Q 29Some pregnant women are prescribed a daily low-dose aspirin from week 12 to lower their risk of which condition?
Pre-eclampsia
Pre-eclampsia is dangerously high blood pressure in pregnancy that can threaten mother and baby. The same drug at painkiller doses is advised against in pregnancy, above all after 20 weeks, when it can harm the baby.
Q 30What ear symptom can high doses of aspirin cause?
Ringing in the ears
Ringing in the ears, or tinnitus, is a classic early warning that the dose has climbed too high. It is usually temporary and fades once the salicylate level in the blood comes back down.