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Narcotic analgesics

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Abstract

There is documentation of the use of opium derived products in the ancient history of the Assyrians: the Egyptians; in the sixth century AD by the Roman Dioscorides; and by Avicenna (980–1037). Reference to opium like products is made by Paracelsus and by Shakespeare. Charles Louis Derosne and Fredrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner isolated morphine from raw opium in 1802 and 1806 respectively, and it was Sertürner who named the substance morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek God of dreams. By the middle 1800s, Opium and related opioid derived products were the source of a major addiction in USA, and to some extent in the United Kingdom. Opioid products are of major therapeutic value in the treatment of pain from injury, post surgery, intractable pain conditions, and some forms of terminal cancer.

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Author notes

  1. Professor W. Watson Buchanan Deceased, 28th January 2006.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8P 1H6, Canada

    W. Watson Buchanan & Walter F. Kean

  2. Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK

    K. D. Rainsford

  3. Haldimand War Memorial Hospital, 400 Broad Street, Dunnville, ON, N1A 2P7, Canada

    Colin A. Kean & Walter F. Kean

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  1. W. Watson Buchanan
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Buchanan, W.W., Rainsford, K.D., Kean, C.A. et al. Narcotic analgesics. Inflammopharmacol 32, 23–28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10787-023-01304-y

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