Medicinal opium

For use in medicine, opium is dried, powdered and standardised to a definite content of morphine, which the British Pharmacopoeia 1932 places at 10 per cent, (limits 9-5 and 10-5), and the United States Pharma-copceia (XIII) at not less than 10 or more than 10-5 per cent. 

Estimation of Morphine in Opium. The problem of determining with reasonable accuracy the percentage of morphine in opium is of importance for the standardisation of medicinal opium, as a means of fixing the price of crude opium, and of controlling factory operations in the extraction of... 

ILs have been used in the CE-electrochemiluminescence (ECL) method to determine bioactive constituents in Chinese traditional medicine [58]. CE/Tris(2,2-bipyridyl) ruthenium(II) (Ru(bpy)3 +) ECL, CE-ECL, with an IL detection system was established to determine bioactive constituents in Chinese traditional medicine opium poppy, which contains large amounts of coexistent substances. Running buffer containing 25 mM borax-8 mM [C2CiIm][BF4] (pH 9.18) was used, which resulted in significant changes in separation selectivity and obvious enhancement in ECL intensities for those alkaloids with similar structures. Quantitative analysis of four alkaloids was... 

Laudanum was any of a number of tinctures or mixtures of opium with other materials. In the nineteenth century tincture of opium was given the acronym GOM (God s Own Medicine). Opium was smoked and eaten recreationally and to boost the output of natives at hard labor thoughout the Near and Far East for hundreds of years. 

Opium has been known and used for 4000 years or more. In recent times, attempts have been made at governmental and international levels to control the cultivation of the opium poppy, but with only limited success. In endeavours to reduce drug problems involving opium-derived materials, especially heroin, where extremely large profits can be made from smuggling relatively small amounts of opium, much pharmaceutical production has been replaced by the processing of the bulkier poppy straw . The entire plant tops are harvested and dried, then extracted for their alkaloid content in the pharmaceutical industry. Poppy straw now accounts for most of the medicinal opium alkaloid production, but there is still... 

The main producer of medicinal opium is India, whilst poppy straw is cultivated in Turkey, Russia, and Australia. Opium destined for the black market originates from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos, and Thailand), the Golden Crescent (Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), and Mexico. 

TB, COD, NO, narcotine CE-ECL One-step extraction approach. FASI Buffer (25 mM borax, 8 mM 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrabflouorohorate 1 X 10- to 1 X 10 M Chinese traditional medicine opium poppy samples [124]... 

The other field of application of the different methods of analysis is the cultivated opium plant (P. somniferum L.) itself, which produces TB. It has a Imig cultivatiOTi history worldwide and there are many varieties having various colors and shapes of flowers, shapes of capsules, and alkaloid composition and content. Despite the strict control of the plants, seeds of P. somniferum have been imported and sold as an ornamental gardening flower for which to control illegal cultivation of the plants, rapid and reliable extraction methods of opium alkaloids fi om many plant samples are required. CZE-UV has been employed for the analysis of opium samples and poppy straws [111, 113] and in presence of p-CD by CE-CD-UV in Iranian opium poppy plants [114]. Other detection systems such as MS and ECL with the same separation technique have been employed for the analysis of illicit samples [131] and Chinese traditional medicine opium poppy samples [124], respectively. 

Most Illegal opium products smuggled Into the U.S. In recent years have come from Turkey via France, where morphine was converted to heroin. However, Turkey has only accounted for about 5% of the world production, so closing out opium cultivation in Turkey (subsidized by the U.S.) had little or no effect on Illicit heroin supplies In the U.S., although It did contribute to a shortage of medicinal opium exacerbated by crop failures in India. Furthermore, legal cultivation of opium In Turkey Is about to be reinstituted for economic reasons. 

Enkephalins and Endorphins. Morphine (142), an alkaloid found in opium, was first isolated in the early nineteenth century and widely used in patent medicines of that eta. It is pharmacologically potent and includes analgesic and mood altering effects. Endogenous opiates, the enkephalins, endorphins, and dynotphins were identified in the mid-1970s (3,51) (see Opioids, endogenous). Enkephalins and endorphins ate Hsted in Table 9. 

The first scheme for the separation of the six chief alkaloids of opium, VIZ., morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine, narcotine and narceine, is probably that of Plugge. Much later Kljatschkina investigated for each of these six bases the properties by means of which isolation and estimation could probably be effected and, on the basis of the results, devised a plan for such analyses. More recently Anneler has published a detailed account of a scheme with the same objective. l Attention had already been given to complex, systematic analyses of this kind, in connection with examination of the mixtures of opium alkaloids, which have long been in use in medicine in these at first only morphine and other alkaloids were determined, but in the more recent schemes provision is made for the estimation of each alkaloid. ... 

Morphine, when extracted from raw opium and treated chemically, yields the semisynthetic narcotics hydromorphone, oxymorphone, oxycodone, and heroin. Heroin is an illegal narcotic in the United States and is not used in medicine. Synthetic narcotics are those man-made analgesics with properties and actions similar to the natural opioids. Examples of synthetic narcotic analgesics are methadone, levorphanol, remifen-tanil, and meperidine Additional narcotics are listed in the Summary Drug Table Narcotic Analgesics. 

In the mid-nineteenth century, it was the custom for doctors to frequently prescribe morphine (first isolated from opium by Friedrich Serturner in 1806) and other opium preparations. Morphine did not have a major impact on medical practice until the invention of the hypodermic needle in 1840. Soldiers illness was recognized after the Civil War when more than 50,000 veterans became dependent on morphine as a result of treatment for combat injuries (Musto 1987). The public also had ready access to opium and purified drugs in grocery stores and pharmacies. Medicinal mixtures and nostrums, usually unlabelled as to contents, often contained opium or morphine. By the end of the century, many physicians had come to recognize that chronic use of morphine was a disorder (morphinism), although others in society... 

Classical examples of Asian medicinal plants are Papaver somniferum (opium, Papaveraceae), Cannabis sativa L. (cannabis, Cannabinaceae), and Myristica fragrans... 

About 120 species of plants classified within the family Rubiaceae are used in traditional medicine of Asia and the Pacific, of which, Mitragyna speciosa has been used throughout Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand and Borneo, as an intoxicant. The leaves are chewed alone or mixed with betel, or else prepared for smoking like opium, and its use is legally prescribed in Thailand. 

Morphine (10) and codeine (11), constituents of opium, are the most interesting alkaloids found in nature. Morphine is also the oldest alkaloid isolated, in 1805, by the German pharmacist Sertiimer from opium, the sun dried latex of Papaver somniferum. The structure of morphine with its so-called morphinan skeleton, once called the acrobat under the alkaloids, was finally elucidated in 1952 by the first total synthesis performed by Gates and Tschudi. Many syntheses would follow [26], but all morphine used today, whether legal or illicit, originates in the natural source P. somniferum or its extract, opium. The latex may contain up to 20% morphine. Most legal morphine is converted into the anticough medicine codeine (Table 5.1) by treatment with trimethylanilinium methoxide, whereas almost all illicit morphine is acetylated to the diacetate heroin. 

Before delving into ways the living world uses its special chemicals, we should note that these compounds touch our own lives in important ways. For millennia, humans have been borrowing natural chemicals for their own purposes, most often as drugs. Our oldest medicine is opium, which we prepare from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) today much as Mediterranean peoples did four thousand years ago. Just as we do, these early communities valued opium for its ability to kill pain and impart a sense of well-being. The principal constituent responsible for these effects is a chemical compound called morphine, which remains unsurpassed in its ability to control severe pain. In poppies, morphine s toxicity and bitterness presumably repel herbivores looking for a tasty meal. 

The opium poppy is one of several plants that have profoundly affected human history. It has provided an unmatched medicine for... 

It is interesting to note that one of the founders of modern psychiatry, Kraepelin, listed only nine substances that were available for the treatment of psychiatric illness in the 1890s. These were opium, morphine, scopolamine, hashish, chloral hydrate, a barbiturate, alcohol, chloroform and various bromides. Later Bleuler, another founder of modern psychiatry, added paraldehyde and sodium barbitone to the list. Thus psychopharmacology is a very recent area of medicine which largely arose from the chance discovery of chlorpromazine by Delay and Deniker in France in 1952, and of imipramine by Kuhn in Switzerland in 1957. 

Narcotic analgesics Morphine and many of its homologues, when administered in medicinal doses, relieve pain and produce sleep. In poisonous doses, these produce stupor, coma, convulsions and ultimately death. Morphine narcotics are sometimes referred to as opiates, since they are obtained from the opium poppy. 

Opium is a cmde exudate obtained from the opium poppy Papaver somniferum, and it provides several medicinally useful alkaloids. One of these is codeine, which is widely used as a moderate analgesic. Opium contains only relatively small amounts of codeine (1-2%), however, and most of the codeine for dmg use is obtained by semi-synthesis from morphine, which is the major component (12-20%) in opium. Conversion of morphine into... 

The ancient Egyptians have described several useful preparations such as opium and castor oil. They also used rotten bread for treating infections which resembles our use of antibiotics produced by moulds and fungi. The Roman physician, Dioscorides, studied the medical uses of hundreds of plants and wrote the first systematic materia mediea during the first century. He also described the medicinal properties of wines. 

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