Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine
- 2 Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea, and distilled liquor, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries
- 3 Pharmacological experimentation with opium in the eighteenth century
- 4 The regulation of the supply of drugs in Britain before 1868
- 5 Das Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office) and the chemical industry in Germany during the Second Empire: partners or adversaries?
- 6 From all purpose anodyne to marker of deviance: physicians' attitudes towards opiates in the US from 1890 to 1940
- 7 Changes in alcohol use among Navajos and other Indians of the American Southwest
- 8 The drug habit: the association of the word ‘drug’ with abuse in American history
- 9 Research and development in the UK pharmaceutical industry from the nineteenth century to the 1960s
- 10 AIDS, drugs, and history
- 11 Anomalies and mysteries in the ‘War on Drugs’
- Glossary
- Index
1 - The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine
- 2 Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea, and distilled liquor, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries
- 3 Pharmacological experimentation with opium in the eighteenth century
- 4 The regulation of the supply of drugs in Britain before 1868
- 5 Das Kaiserliche Gesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office) and the chemical industry in Germany during the Second Empire: partners or adversaries?
- 6 From all purpose anodyne to marker of deviance: physicians' attitudes towards opiates in the US from 1890 to 1940
- 7 Changes in alcohol use among Navajos and other Indians of the American Southwest
- 8 The drug habit: the association of the word ‘drug’ with abuse in American history
- 9 Research and development in the UK pharmaceutical industry from the nineteenth century to the 1960s
- 10 AIDS, drugs, and history
- 11 Anomalies and mysteries in the ‘War on Drugs’
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
well known from earliest Greek history, the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) occupied an important role in ancient pharmacy and medicine, and its use encompassed matters of dietetics as well as frequent employment as a soporific and general analgesic. Greco-Roman medicine and pharmacology incorporated a very succinct knowledge and command of the dangers and benefits in the use of the opium poppy, and actions of drugs were widely understood. Its harvesting, preparation, distribution, and application in general pharmacy and medical therapeutics all were sophisticated and as precise as was then possible. Our ancient sources attest repeatedly to this deep sophistication in the grasp and understanding of the opium poppy, and Hellenistic and Roman pharmacy had refined a lengthy and venerated tradition of multiple uses. Modern pharmacology and medicinal chemistry, of course, confirms much of this ancient expertise, even as we wrestle with the addictive effects of the major alkaloids commonly isolated and administered from the raw opium. One notes in the study of Hellenistic and Roman use of opium that the ‘natural product’ may have induced occasional addiction (and was certainly employed in suicides), but unlike the dangers explicit with the employment of morphine, codeine, thebaine, and other opium alkaloids in modern pharmacy and medicine, and ancients could presume their collected latex had benefits that far outweighed its dangers.
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- Information
- Drugs and Narcotics in History , pp. 4 - 23Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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