Definition And History
Many
substances with high
pharmacological activity can be
extracted from the plant
Papaver somniferum, known popularly as '
poppies'. By cutting the
papaver somniferum pod when it is still green, a
milky juice can be obtained, and that is the opium (the word opium in
Greek means
juice).
When dried, this juice is called opium
powder. It contains several highly active
substances. The most known is the
morphine. The word '
morphine' derives from the
greek mythologic God Morpheus, the
God of the
dreams.
One can easily figure out the
effects of opium and
morphine by their names.
Morphine ->
dream;
somniferum -> from the
latin meaning '
sleep inducer'. In other words, they're
depressors of the
Central Nervous System (or
CNS), and make the
brain function at a slower pace than
normal. But opium still contain other
substances, and
codeine is also well known. It is still possible to obtain another
substance,
heroin, when making a small
chemical modification in
morphine's
formula. Hence,
heroin is a
semi-
synthetic substance (or
semi-
natural).
These
substances are called
opiate drugs or just
opiates, for they come from the opium; they can be natural
opiates when they don't suffer any modification (
morphine,
codeine), or
semi-
synthetic opiates when they are resultant from partial modifications of the natural
substances (as in the case of
heroin).
But the
human being was capable of imitating
nature by manufacturing in
laboratories several
substances with similar action of
opiates: meperidine, propoxiphene and
methadone are just a few examples. These completely
synthetic substances are called
opioids (meaning: "similar to
opiates").
All these
substances are put into
capsules,
pills or
vials, becoming
medicine.