Discovery Central - Morphine, Opium and Heroin
Welcome back to all my Snoopers. This time I'll be giving you discoveries, mainly scientific ones. This new collection of articles called "Discovery Central" will be your link to the origins of the most common and used chemicals around. And the one I'm going to talk about this time is probably one of the most effective painkiller ever used. To be properly clear, Morphine (formula on the right) is an analgesic drug derived from opium but far more reliable and powerful. Like other chemicals of the same family, called opioids, morphine acts directly on the central nervous system (CNS) to relieve pain. As everybody know, it's highly addictive and the abuse can reverse the effects fairly rapidly, worsening pain through Hyperalgesia. The discovery of Morphine changed pharmacology and pain relief. But to start talking about it, we have to begin with the origins and use of opium. Derived from the seedpods of the poppy, opium (scientifically called Papaver somnifer...