Tylenol is a North American brand of drugs for relieving pain, reducing fever, and relieving the symptoms of allergies, cold, cough, and flu. The active ingredient of its original, flagship product, acetaminophen (called "paracetamol" outside North America), is marketed as an analgesic and antipyretic. Like the words "acetaminophen" and "paracetamol", the brand name is derived from the chemical name for the compound, N-acetyl-para-aminophenol (AP...
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Tylenol is a North American brand of drugs for relieving pain, reducing fever, and relieving the symptoms of allergies, cold, cough, and flu. The active ingredient of its original, flagship product, acetaminophen (called "paracetamol" outside North America), is marketed as an analgesic and antipyretic. Like the words "acetaminophen" and "paracetamol", the brand name is derived from the chemical name for the compound, N-acetyl-para-aminophenol (APAP). The brand is owned by McNeil Consumer Healthcare.
The active substance of Tylenol, acetaminophen, was first used in medicine in 1894. Acetaminophen only gained widespread use after 1948, when scientists concluded that another popular drug, acetanilide, was toxic and that the same therapeutic effect could be more safely achieved with acetaminophen, which was already known to be a metabolite of acetanilide.
James Roth, a U.S. gastroenterologist, advocated paracetamol as a safer alternative to aspirin, which was shown to have some negative...
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