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A medicine cabinet with products like aspirin — a precursor, salicin, is in native healers’ willow bark — shows the ancient knowledge still in use.

The active ingredient in willow bark is salicin, the original source for what ultimately became aspirin.

David Maitland photographed the crystallised chemical salicin, which comes from willow tree bark.

Salicin forms the basis of the analgesic Aspirin - no doubt this is why some animals seek out willow bark to chew on.

The compound within the willow bark that provided these benefits was not isolated until the early 1800s in Germany and was initially named salicin.