Morphine: Banning the Bane of Pain
Despite the terrible problem of narcotic addiction, a world without morphine would have more suffering, not less.
Morphine is the active ingredient in opium, used from time beyond memory to treat pain. Isolated in the early 1800s, morphine was named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.
"Without morphine, untold numbers of people would have spent their lives in great pain," Stone says. "And it is used after surgery, alleviating a lot of suffering. It is the forerunner of several generations of pain-alleviating drugs. It is one of the great drugs of all time."
Ironically, efforts to create a non-addictive form of morphine led to the creation -- and marketing -- of diacetylmorphine by the Bayer company. Its 1898 brand name: Heroin.
Despite this and other missteps, morphine and its progeny form the basis of modern pain management. Modern doctors no longer see pain as a side effect of disease. They see it as harmful in and of itself. And they see it as treatable.