3400 BC: Sumerians cultivated the Joy Plant. The Sanskrit word for opium is ahi-phena which means the venomous forth or snake foam, from the oozing latex of the plant.

1300 BC: Cultivated by Egyptians, bought by Phoenicians and Minoans, used by priests for healing, given by Isis to Ra as treatment for headache. Minoan opium goddess wearing a crown of three poppies with a pipe

In 200 BC classical Greece, Greeks employed opium for both medicinal and recreational purposes. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Telemachus takes it to momentarily forget his worries. Opium was combined with poison

hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death. Grains of poppy plant strained to stop a crying child. Sponge soaked in opium used in surgery

200 BC: Greek gods Hypnos (sleep) and Nyx (Night) were depicted wreathed in or holding poppies.

500: Persians physicians had a medical school in Baghdad that made use of opium as an anesthetic and treatment for melancholy. It was recommended as a self treatment if a doctor was not available.

In 1500: Paracelsus returned from his wanderings in Arabia with “stones of immortality” in his pommel containing opium, citris juice, and “quintessence of gold”. This tincture was called Laudanum

1573: Turkish natives of Constantinople regularly drink “black water made with opium” but which led to addiction. Dervishes gained ecstasy, soldiers courage, others bliss and voluptuousness.

1600: Thomas Sydenham, the “father of English medicine” said “Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give

to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium”

1821: Confessions of an Opium Eater.

Confessions of an Opium Eater is a 1962 American film based on the 1822 autobiographical novel by Thomas de Quincey. It stars Vincent Price as Thomas de Quincey, a nineteenth century adventurer who becomes involved in a tong war in San Francisco. Price also narrated the film.

In 1822, Friedrich Serturner isolated the active ingredient in opium and named it morphium after the Greek God Morpheus. Morpheus has the ability to take any human form and appear in dreams. The successful isolation marked the beginning of the pharmaceutical industry.

In 1874, the same researchers who developed Aspirin synthesized Heroin.

Pierce told Wright:“ Doses ... were subcutaneously injected into young dogs and rabbits ... with the following general results ... great prostration, fear, and sleepiness speedily following the administration, the eyes being sensitive, and pupils constrict, considerable salivation being produced in dogs, and slight tendency to vomiting in some cases, but no actual emesis. Respiration was at first quickened, but subsequently reduced, and the heart's action was diminished, and rendered irregular. Marked want of coordinating power over the muscular movements, and loss of power in the pelvis and hind limbs, together with a diminution of temperature in the rectum of about .4 C.”

Diacetylmorphine was first synthesized in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, an English chemist working at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. He had been experimenting with combining morphine with various acids. He boiled anhydrous morphine alkaloid with acetic anhydride for several hours and produced a more potent, acetylated form of morphine, now called diacetylmorphine or morphine diacetate. The compound was sent to F. M. Pierce of Owens College in Manchester for analysis.

Heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute until 1910 when it was found to actually be more potent.