4,5-Epoxymorphinans

Abstract

The latex obtained by incision of the unripe seed capsule of the poppy, Papaver somniferum, and known as opium is the source of several pharmacologically important alkaloids. Dioskurides, in about a.d. 77, referred to both the latex (opos) and a total plant extract (mekonion) and to the use of oral and inhaled (pipe-smoked) opium to induce a state of euphoria and sedation. Since before the Christian era the therapeutic properties of opium were evident, with the first written reference to poppy juice being by Theophrastus in the third century b.c.