The #SciArtSeptember prompt is weeping so here is my weeping willow and salicylate cyanotype!

Willow has been used used for medicinal purposes for 1000s of years; cures using willow appear in the writings of various ancient Greek scholars & infusions of willow bark were used traditionally by Cherokee & other Indigenous peoples of NA for fever & other medicinal purposes.
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#sciart #printmaking #chemistry #salix #weepingWillow #willow #histsci #MastoArt

In 1768, an English vicar in Chipping Norton, Reverend Edward Stone (1702-1768) wandered his grounds, picked some weeping willow boughs & absentmindedly nibbled on it. It was not tasty! But, its extraordinary bitterness reminded him of cinchona bark, which was known to prevent or reduce fevers. It wasn’t unusual to assume physical traits of plants indicated their therapeutic properties, following the ancient “doctrine of signatures”, so Stone hypothesized 🧵2/n

that a tree which likes moisture, might cure malarial fever, which flares up in humid areas.

After more than 3 months of drying a pound of willow branches outside a baker’s oven
& then pulverized them into powder, he tested this hypothesis by taking some dissolved in liquid when he had a fever. He was delighted to find it soothed his fever. He proceeded to use willow bark to treat his 50 parishioners, & then announced his discovery in a letter in 1763 to the President of the Royal Society.
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Now we know that cinchona bark is useful in treating malaria because it contains quinine, whereas the willow tree is source of salicylate, a potent anti-inflammatory. Dissolved in water he had salicylic acid the principal metabolite of aspirin. Bitter taste was not a reliable indication it could treat fever & did not indicate the same active bitter-tasting ingredients as cinchona bark. But nonetheless Stone had discovered a useful medicine cure & 🧵4/

was the first to isolate the active ingredient salicylate. It wasn’t adopted by the medical establishment during his lifetime. More than 100 years later, chemists Felix Hoffmann & Arthur Eichengrün developed a less corrosive compound of salicylic acid, acetylate salicylate in 1897 marketed by the Bayer Company as aspirin in 1899.

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https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1764570273

@minouette ...or perhaps he had heard about the "toothache tree" of the Native American peoples and tested it out for himself. 🤔

https://nativetech.org/willow/willow.htm

NativeTech: Willow Branches and Other Twigs and Roots

Native American Technology & Art: a topically organized educational web site emphasizing the Eastern Woodlands region, organized into categories of Beadwork, Birds & Feathers, Clay & Pottery, Leather & Clothes, Metalwork, Plants & Trees, Porcupine Quills, Stonework & Tools, Weaving & Cordage, Games & Toys and Food & Recipes. Find simple instructional information about how these materials are used by Natives, and detailed background on the history and development of these kinds of Native technologies, showing both the change and continuity from pre-contact times to the present. NativeTech is dedicated to disconnecting the term 'primitive' from peoples' perceptions of Native American technology and art.

@wcbdata as mentioned earlier in my thread willow had been used by Cherokee and other North American Indigenous peoples since ancient times. He was far from first to try willow as a medicine but was the person who isolated salicylate.

@minouette Yeah! It's amazing how much knowledge "modern" culture missed out on (and probably continues to) because we've discounted whole regions and peoples.

Thanks for the histories - I really enjoy them!

@wcbdata thanks!

We do absolutely have a terrible habit of deciding things are “discovered” long after all sorts of excluded people(s) have knowledge of them.