Morphine celebrated its 200th year Birthday May 21, 2005.
Orgination of name morphine is below. Pretty Cool.
Also, in WWII little morphine ampule-jets were given out to the troops that paratrooped into Normandy. They were given this very high dose morphine to self inject (to commit suicide) should they suffer a serious injury or be in jeopardy of being captured and tortured.
Discovery of morphine
Morphine was discovered by Freidrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner (1783-1841), an obscure, uneducated, 21-year-old pharmacist's assistant with little equipment but loads of curiosity.
Serturner wondered about the medicinal properties of opium, which was widely used by 18th-century physicians. In a series of experiments, performed in his spare time and published in 1806, he managed to isolate an organic alkaloid compound from the resinous gum secreted by Papaver somniferum -- the opium poppy.
Serturner found that opium with the alkaloid removed had no effect on animals, but the alkaloid itself had ten times the power of processed opium. He named that substance morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, for its tendency to cause sleep. He spent several years experimenting with morphine, often on himself, learning its therapeutic effects as well as its considerable dangers. Although his work was initially ignored, he recognized its significance. "I flatter myself," he wrote in 1816, that "my observations have explained to a considerable extent the constitution of opium, and that I have enriched chemistry with a new acid (meconic) and with a new alkaline base (morphium), a remarkable substance."
2006-11-28 14:49:39
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answer #1
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answered by murf I 1
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I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I would try and find a song lyric that refers to it.
2006-11-28 14:23:03
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answer #2
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answered by the_fatmanwalksalone 4
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