Wind In The Willow
by Kathy Bassett
Title
Wind In The Willow
Artist
Kathy Bassett
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A strong wind off the Okanagan Lake, and the shore of Naramata brings a gift of motion in a graceful way, through the willow. The leaves and bark of the willow tree have been mentioned in ancient texts from Assyria, Sumer and Egypt as a remedy for aches and fever, and the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about its medicinal properties in the fifth century BC. Native Americans across the Americas relied on it as a staple of their medical treatments. It temporarily relieves headache, stomachache, and other body pain. Salicin is metabolized into salicylic acid in the human body, which is a precursor of aspirin. In 1763, its medicinal properties were observed by the Reverend Edward Stone in England. He notified the Royal Society, which published his findings. The active extract of the bark, called salicin, was isolated to its crystalline form in 1828 by Henri Leroux, a French pharmacist, and Raffaele Piria, an Italian chemist, who then succeeded in separating out the compound in its pure state. In 1897, Felix Hoffmann created a synthetically altered version of salicin (in his case derived from the Spiraea plant), which caused less digestive upset than pure salicylic acid. The new drug, formally acetylsalicylic acid, was named Aspirin by Hoffmann's employer Bayer AG. This gave rise to the hugely important class of drugs known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
Uploaded
April 26th, 2013
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Comments (5)
Kathy Bassett
Thank you for the feature of Wind In The Willow in your group Images That Excite You, John!
John Bailey
Congratulations on being featured in the Fine Art America Group "Images That Excite You!"