page_title: Bayer
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Bayer / Early history / World War I
context_page_description: Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include human and veterinary pharmaceuticals; consumer healthcare products; agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. Werner Baumann has been CEO since 2016.
  Founded in Barmen in 1863 as a dyestuffs factory, Bayer's first and best-known product was aspirin. In 1898 Bayer trademarked the name heroin for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910. Bayer also introduced phenobarbital; prontosil, the first widely used antibiotic and the subject of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine; the antibiotic Cipro; and Yaz birth control pills.
  In 1925, Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben, the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company.
context_section_description: During World War I (1914–1918), Bayer's assets, including the rights to its name and trademarks, were confiscated in the United States, Canada and several other countries. In the United States and Canada, Bayer's assets and trademarks, including the well-known Bayer cross, were acquired by Sterling Drug, a predecessor of Sterling Winthrop and were not reclaimed until 1994. 
  Throughout the war, Bayer was involved in production and development of various chemical weapons. In 1914, Bayer manufactured dianisidine chlorosulfate for use in 105 mm artillery shell, intended as a lung irritant against British forces.
  In 1916, Bayer scientists discovered suramin, an anti-parasite drug that is still sold by Bayer under the brand name Germanin. The formula of suramin was kept secret by Bayer for commercial reasons, but it was elucidated and published in 1924 by Ernest Fourneau and his team at the Pasteur Institute. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.
caption: Bayer advertisement, 1911
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