MORPHINE AND RELATED OPIOIDS History

first undisputed reference to "poppy juice" is found in the writings of Theophrastus in the third century B.C. the word opium being derived from the Greek word for "juice" the drug being obtained from the juice of the poppy Papaver sominiferum Arabian physicians were well versed in its uses and introduced the plant to the Orient Paracelsus, circa 1500, is credited with repopularising the drug in Europe, where it had fallen out of favor due to toxicity in the 18 century opium smoking became popular in the Orient and its ready availability in Europe led to considerable abuse opium contains more than 20 alkaloids and in 1806, Sertürner isolated a pure substance in opium, which he named morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams isolation of other alkaloids soon followed, codeine in 1832 and papaverine in 1848 by the middle of the 19 century, use of the pure alkaloids rather than crude opium was becoming widespread the problems of widespread addiction led to the search for a morphine antagonist, and in 1951 nalorphine was used in the RX of morphine overdose at the same time, the analgesic effects stimulated the development of a number of new drugs, including naloxone, pentazocine, butorphanol etc. by 1967, researchers had concluded that the complex interactions and differences between morphine and its derivatives could only be explained by the existence of more than one receptor type → receptor dualism, Martin (1967) in 1973, following an approach developed by Goldstein, 3 groups of workers described saturable, stereospecific binding sites for opiate drugs in 1975, the enkephalin pentapeptides were isolated from pig brain since then researchers have shown that there are three distinct families of endogenous opioid peptides and multiple categories of opioid receptors