About Opiates
Opium poppies had been seen on drawings and coins predating mentions in greek literature by over 1000 years.
In Greek poppies were called Opion which came from the word for 'juice'.
When translated into latin this became Opium.During the Renaissance, Paracelsus thought that no matter what the disease, sleep and pain relief was part of the cure.
He used several different preparations of opium one you may have heard of which was a victorian favourite and available from most corner shops was Laudanum, from the latin 'something to be praised'.
Moving on a bit, Sigmund Freud treated his Opium addicts with cocaine.
This proved disatrous as cocaine is too short acting, but this gave other medical uses such as lignocaine and other local anaesthetics.
Us good old brits were also happy pushing Opium on China and after them grumbling about us flogging this stuff, we had a little war, funnily enough called the 'Opium wars', We did manage to win this and go on trading the stuff and took Hong kong on a 100 year lease as it was a vital trading port.
Custom figures from 1881 showed that 6million kg of opium was imported into China per year.
A scottish doctor Alexander Wood experimented with injecting opium and his wife who he used to experiment on was maybe the first woman to die of an injected opiate overdose.
Bayer, the german company who also were famous for aspirin patented heroin which they began to sell in 1898 as a cure for coughs and TB
MILD TO MODERATE PAIN RELIEF
CODEINE is a Mild Opiate, taken in different strengths 8mg – 30mg
The following are combinations of Aspirin and codeine or Paracetamol and codeine.
Dihydrocodeine is 30 mgs of codeine
The next opiate given in hospital for very severe pain would be morphine then diamorphine, heroin, usually given by injection.
Over The Counter products containing Codeine include:- Co-Codamol, Solpadeine, Syndol, Solpadol, Solpaflex, Codis, Paracodol, Propain Plus, Panadol Ultra, Feminax, Cuprofen Plus and Nurofen Plus.
Dihydrocodine is found in the OTC product Paramol.
