Narcotics
2637 BCE to 2115 CE
The term "narcotic"", based on the Greek word for narcosis, the term used by Hippocrates for the process of numbing or the numbed state, is believed to have been coined by the Greek physician Galen to refer to agents that numb or deaden, causing loss of feeling or paralysis.
Galen listed mandrake root, altercus (eclata) seeds, and poppy juice (opium) as the chief examples.
Narcotics originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with sleep-inducing properties.
In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates and opioids, commonly morphine and heroin, as well as derivatives of many of the compounds found within raw opium latex.
The primary three are morphine, codeine, and thebaine (while thebaine itself is only very mildly psychoactive, it is a crucial precursor in the vast majority of semi-synthetic opioids, such as hydrocodone).
The term opiate should be differentiated from the broader term opioid, which includes all drugs with morphine-like effects, including opiates, semi-synthetic opioids derived from opiates (such as heroin, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, and oxymorphone), and synthetic opioids that are not derived from opiates (such as fentanyl, buprenorphine, and methadone).
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Nippur, at present Nuffar, about one hundred miles (one hundred and sixty kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, is occupied from around 2500 BCE.
Tablets found at Nippur describe the collection of poppy juice in the morning and its use in production of opium.
Opium is used with poison hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death, but it is also used in medicine.
The Ebers Papyrus describes a way to "stop a crying child" using grains of the poppy-plant strained to a pulp.
Spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium, are used during surgery.
The opium trade has flourished from the reigns of Thutmose IV to Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen; the trade route has included the Minoans, the Phoenicians, and the Mycenaeans.
The Egyptians around 1300 BCE cultivate opium thebaicum in the famous poppy fields of Thebes.
Opium is cultivated by 1100 BCE on Cyprus, where surgical-quality knives are used to score the poppy pods, and opium is cultivated, traded, and smoked.
The writings of Homer indicate Greek usage of opium by at least 900 BCE.
Greek physician Hippocrates makes extensive use of medicinal herbs, including opium.
He dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics.
His compilation On Airs, Waters and Places is the first medical climatology.
The growth of poppies for their opium content spreads slowly eastward from Mesopotamia and Greece.
Alexander had introduced opium to the people of Persia and India; the substance was apparently unknown in the latter country.
Opium is at first taken in the form of pills or is added to beverages.
The oral intake of raw opium as a medicine does not appear to have produced widespread addictions in ancient Asian societies.
The Romans, who call mercury argentum vivum, living silver, employ it, unfortunately for those using it, in cosmetics.
Pliny and Dioscorides write about the recovery of quicksilver from cinnabar by distillation and condensation of the vapor, the forerunner of modern methods of metallurgical treatment.
Pliny also describes the trade between Spain and Rome in mercury and cinnabar, which is also employed as a pigment or coloring because of its attractive red hue.
Complied between 50 and 70 CE by the physician Pedanius Dioscorides, a native of Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, he has written a five-volume book in his native Greek, known in English by its Latin title De Materia Medica ("Regarding Medical Materials").
The oldest surviving text on drugs and their use, the work also records the Dacian and Thracian names for some plants, which otherwise would have been lost.
Dioscorides describes drugs of plant, animal, and mineral origin and give information on drug dosage, administration, and specific uses.