The origin of MDMA (ecstasy) revisited: the true story reconstructed from the original documents*
Addiction July 8, 2006 Roland W. Freudenmann, Florian Öxler, Sabine Bernschneider‐reif 201 citations
MDMA was first synthesized by Merck in 1912, but not as an appetite suppressant as commonly claimed. Original documents from Merck's archive show it was an unimportant precursor in a new synthesis for hemostatic substances, patented to evade a competitor's patent. Pharmacological testing occurred in 1927 and 1959, but not in humans. The myth that MDMA was developed as an appetite suppressor likely arose from uncritical copy-paste errors in later literature.