The pharmaceutical giants who gave us aspirin also invented heroin
In short: While opium has been used for millennia, heroin is a modern chemical invention. This video explores the 19th-century origins of diacetylmorphine and the specific laboratory where it was first synthesized.
Heroin, known chemically as diacetylmorphine, was not an ancient substance but a product of Victorian science. During 1874, a chemist named Charles Romley Alder Wright produced it at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London.
This history highlights the rapid evolution of pharmacology, moving from the traditional use of opium—documented since at least 3400 BC—to the creation of potent synthetic derivatives in a clinical setting.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Heroin Was Created by the Makers of Aspirin
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