Opium Report

There was a time when society didn’t know a lot about medicine or narcotics and it’s affect on the society as a whole. For instance they were primitive in dealing with the preparations concerning opium in eating, smoking, or drinking it in tea. Even throughout history opium didn’t change, only society’s drug habits have. Doctors and scientists truly had a difficult time finding effective ways to use opium as a painkiller. For science and medicine was young then. But then again, society had little knowledge about how potent the opium poppy was.

The first understanding of opium didn’t happen until Hippocrates, the father of medicine, discovered that drinking opium in tea caused patients to fall in a deep sleep. The treatment of opium went well in surgery. When he was younger, he tried opium and the drug worked. His opinion on opium was it was better to use small doses than large ones because it was less harmful. But he did recommend opium as a medicine for pain.

Many deaths were caused by the misuse of opium until Paracelsus came from Switzerland with a new method. This method was to refine opium from a powder to a liquid form. Because opium didn’t dissolve well in water, he then put the drug in brandy; however, it was found to be a bitter cough syrup for children. Paracelsus was the first one to come up with the alcoholic solution of opium which was widely used in medicine as well as recreation.

Thomas Sydenham from England was the first to put opium in a sweet wine. This made cough syrup taste better for children. This also brought about products like “Save the Baby,” Paregoric, “Dover’s Powder” or “Dr. Pierge’s Elixir Syrups.” Many of these powders and family home remedies were still commonplace at the turn of the 20^th century.

Still the people didn’t understand the dangers of the opium poppy until Friedrich Sertuerner of Germany started using Paracelsus' alcoholic solution of the opium poppy which he refined even further. By analyzing the different parts of opium, he found the active ingredient was morphine. This was a major breakthrough in the history of medicine. Morphine is still used in hospitals and nursing homes today.

It was easy to get the opium drug in the early 1800’s, for many doctors had a good amount of opium on hand. In the meanwhile Doctor Alexander Wood from Scotland had invented the hypodermic syringe, and injecting opium was found to be faster and easier than administering the drug orally. At the time of the Civil War it was thought to be the best medicine.

Opium was not studied again until Heinrich Dreser, the top scientist of the Bayer Company of Germany, had found that diluting morphine further with acetyls produced a drug with "less" side effects. Heroin was considered an affective medication for pneumonia and tuberculosis which were the two leading causes of death in those days. Heroin was thought to be safer than opium or morphine, and was also thought to be non addictive. Then a century later heroin was indeed proven to be very addictive.

In conclusion the opium drug has made many different changes in medicine and has had an affect on society as a whole. People today are taking medicine seriously. True modern scientists are still working to improve on drugs like opium, morphine, and heroin.

By Marguerite J. Badger.

May 28, 2004 - June 8, 2004