THE HISTORY OF OPIUM - PART ONE

I covered the earlier years of opium history on an earlier blog. I found it really interesting to research and write about. I always thought that the opium problems were introduced by the Chinese. I was very mistaken. Lets explore some more of the history of Opium.

If you will remember Queen Elizabeth the first ordered her Navy to find the besty opium they could for trade a bit earlier. Then in 1780-1800 The British East India Company works very hard to create a near monopoly on the opium trade in India and China, mostly this is due to its political influence.

It was in 1803 a scientist ,Friedrich Sertuerner, isolates morphine from opium. It was named after Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep.
1821 Thomas DeQuincey publishes Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

1827 The German chemical company E. Merck & Company became the first.
commercial manufacturer of morphine.

1839 All foreign traders are ordered to give up their opium by the Imperial Commissioner of China . The arrival of British send warships is the beginning of the First Opium War. The war went on until 1841 when the Chinese lose the First Opium War; the British take over Hong Kong at this point.

1843 Dr. Alexander Wood invents thehypodermic syringe It has the first hollow needle.

1852 finds that the British are importing opium to Burma.

1856 The Second Opium War is started and ended. At this time, opium becomes legal in China.

 In 1874 Diacetylmorphine HCl (better known by its brand name “heroin“) is invented in England by C.R.A. Wright. In this same year, in San Francisco. one of the first anti-opium laws came to be aimed primarily at marginalizing the Chinese population of California. Also in this same year, the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade was founded in England. Again sort of a racist group and by
1878 Britain passes the Opium Act–a largely racist act.

Research continues and in 1881 Codeine is isolated from opium.

1886 The British acquire the Shan State of Burma attempting to enforce an opium monopoly there.

The US makes several attacks on the Chinese people and their culture from here on in. These are attempts to suppress the Chinese population .

1886 The United States outlaws the importation of opium by any subject of China. In 1890 The United States begins taxing opium and morphine. In the same year Hearst newspapers begin publishing the fiction of white women being seduced by Chinese men in opium dens. to take sexual advantage of them. This was false data. I riled a few feathers.

1898 Heinrich Dreser of the company Bayer publishes the results of his experiments on the use of Diacetylmorphine HCl as a cough suppressant. Bayer names the drug “heroin” and begins commercial production. This takes us up to the 1900s, You can see there is a lot of history behind this very destructive drug.