Papaver somniferum L. (Papaveraceae)

Abstract

The plant is commercially cultivated in many parts of the world, chiefly in India, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Asian part of Turkey, Iran, southeastern Europe, Nepal and Myanmar. Opium poppy and opium have been used since time immemorial. The milky exudate or latex was named opion by the ancient Greeks, derived from opos meaning sap or juice, which later became opium as its modern name. Opium is the dried latex, and poppy straw is the dried mature plant except the seeds. Opium poppy extracts were used to dull the pain of surgery during ancient times, and were also combined with other plants extracts with sedative properties, the primitive form of anesthesia. Most of these sedative plants belong to the botanical family, Solanaceae. The Romans also knew the anesthetic power of Solanaceous plants was increased when they were combined with extracts from opium poppy . In the 16th and 17th centuries Europe, opium preparations were marketed as Laudanum and Dover’s powder that were widely used for pain relief. Unani medicine physicians use opium to treat moderate to severe pain of pleurisy, sciatica, and arthritis, chronic cold, cough due to nerve irritation, ophthalmitis, and chronic dysentery; it is also useful in premature ejaculation, bloody and bilious meningitis, melancholia and schizophrenia. The capsule and seeds contain a large percentage of fixed oil, pale-golden in color, of agreeable odor, dries easily, and was used as food or burning in lamps. Opium contains over twenty different isoquinoline alkaloids which account for most deaths due to poppies. More than 200 years ago, between 1803 and 1805, the pharmacologically active pure compound, morphine, was isolated by the German pharmacist, Friedrich Sertürner, from seed pods of the poppy, and is believed to be the first isolation of an active ingredient from a plant source. Poppy seeds significantly inhibited B[α]P-induced squamous cell carcinomas in the stomachs of Swiss mice. A liquid alcoholic extract, named Elixir Paregorico^® is extensively used for diarrheal diseases in Brazil.