Opium is a narcotic formed from the latex released by lacerating (or "scoring") the immature seed pods of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). It contains up to 12% morphine, an opiate alkaloid, which is most frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade.
Cultivation of opium poppies for food, anesthesia, and ritual purposes dates back to at least the Neolithic Age. The Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Persian and Arab Empires each made widespread use of opium, which was the most potent form of pain relief then available, allowing ancient surgeons to perform prolonged surgical procedures.
Opium is mentioned in the most important medical texts of the ancient world, including the Ebers Papyrus and the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna.
Widespread medical use of unprocessed opium continued through the American Civil War before giving way to morphine and its successors, which could be injected at a precisely controlled dosage. American morphine is still produced primarily from poppies grown and processed in India in the traditional manner and remains the standard of pain relief for casualties of war.
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It is an annual, of up to 1 meter of height, little graft plant, with the oblong leaves, sinuosodentadas in the edges, with the petals of several colors, targets, pink, red and violets, with a dark spot in the base. The fruit is a capsule of good size. It is spread by the south of Europe, North Africa, central and South Asia and America.
It exists in the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to the narcotic, another plant with similar effects, the Chelidonium majus, well-known with the names of golondrinera grass or the wanderers, verruguera grass and celidueña. Latex removes rarely from the incisions of the immature fruits and of other parts of the plant. This latex coagulates in contact with the air.
The opium is a mixture of ranges, different resins, sugars and other substances, between which 20 have pharmacological activity, almost all alkaloids like: morphine, codeine, thebaine, narcobathtub, narceína and papaverina; most important of all of them it is the morphine, contained in the opium in variable proportion (3-22 %) and to which it confers his main qualities.
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