I certainly bought the ancient remedy story. Getting wised up doesn't diminish the amazing work done with willow, and chinchona bark. Obrien writes of 'jesuits bark' a lot in his naval fiction, makes me wonder now how much the Georgian british navy did actually use this kind of thing for fever reduction.

On the whole, I'm going to give blowing willow smoke up my Anus a miss, if that's ok.

This was a great read but I took issue with this a bit:

"When researchers gave people willow bark extract corresponding to 240 mg of salicin, then looked at how much salicylic acid was present in their blood over time, it was the equivalent of taking 87 mg of aspirin (300 mg to 600 mg is recommended per dose, with up to 3600 mg allowed per day). Notably, 240 mg of salicin is the recommended daily dose specified by the European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy...

If... each cup of tea provided 240 mg salicin (possible with a good steeping and a high salicin content in the bark), then one would need to drink 41 cups of tea to get a full, therapeutic aspirin dose of 3600 mg."

Wouldn't you only need around 4 cups to get a full dose? That seems not unreasonable to me. The 10L would be to get the maximum safe dose, which seems like a different thing.

It's relevant because it's a primary argument the author uses to dismiss willow use in older times (even as they point to similar use later as eventually motivating the discovery of aspirin even later).