- A year before Aspirin appeared to the markets, Bayer launched another very important and popular medicine, Heroin. The clinical studies of opium had started already in the early part of the 19th century, when Armand Sequin extracted the most important substance from opium. At the same time a German chemist had already tried the effect of this most important substance to dogs. This important substance was morphine. An article was published from this experiment, but there wasn’t almost any interest to these two important achievements until in 1817, when the respected Annales de Chemie published an article about the effects and qualities of morphine.
- The effect of morphine in pain relief
was very clear already in the early part of the 19th century, but it
took all the way to the year 1854, before a needle was invented, which enabled
to inject the substance under the skin. This invention resulted the fact, that
morphine became an important pain reliever in the civil war fought between the
Union and Confederates from 1861 to 1865, in North America. Morphine was also
widely used in the war between Prussia and France from 1870 to 1871.
- Even when morphine was very effective it was also very addictive medicine and the demands to find a pain reliever which would not addict the patient to the substance, grew louder constantly. In 1874 English Alder Wright started to search for a substance that would not develop a similar addictive habit as morphine developed. He succeeded of extracting diacetylmorphine from the morphine, which was ten times more powerful, than the normal morphine.
- At the start, Bayer was not really
excited about Aspirin which Hoffman had invented, but from the second project of
Hoffman, meaning Heroin which contained diacetylmorphine. A great future was
promised to this product.
- The trade name Heroin was launched in
the year 1898, a year before Aspirin. A huge marketing campaign for Heroin was
launched at the same time, to support the sales of this new miracle medicine.
- Heroin was a miracle medicine of its
time, it was promised to cure nearly everything from cough to labour pains and
to serious injuries. Quite soon other pharmaceutical companies started to
manufacture their own version from Heroin and it’s popularity as an
over-the-counter drug was huge. One of the most popular uses for Heroin was to
cure people who were suffering from morphine addiction.
- Sad but true, Heroin was much more dangerous than morphine and resulted addiction much more faster and effectively than morphine. When the issue was fully realized in the year 1920, alone in the USA, there was about 200 000 people suffering from a Heroin addiction. In 1923, the League of Nations (predecessor of UN) and United States of America banned the sales of Heroin and its use. Quite soon the amount of Heroin produced dropped from the 9 000 kilos in 1926 to the 1 000 kilos in 1931.
- The addictions however didn’t disappear this quickly and there were people left in USA and in Europe, who had an urge and need to get this substance and this way, the criminal activities concentrated around drugs, was guaranteed. Especially after the Second World War, smuggling of Heroin grew like an explosion in the hands of the American gangsters.
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