Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner (1783–1841), Alexander Wood (1817–1884)
IN THE ARMS OF MORPHEUS. The pain-relieving and sleep-inducing properties of opium were well known to ancient healers, but which chemical was responsible for its effects? In 1806, Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner, then an obscure German apothecary apprentice working in Paderborn, reported that he had isolated a chemical from opium that was able to induce profound sleep in dogs. These findings and subsequent others attracted little attention until 1817, when Sertürner announced that he had isolated pure “morpheum,” which he had taken himself and given to three boys under the age of seventeen. Although historically groundbreaking, the experiment was a near disaster, as all subjects almost died from drug overdoses. Morpheum, named after the Greek god of dreams and later renamed morphine, was the first of many alkaloids isolated from plants. In 1822, Sertürner purchased the major pharmacy in Hamelin, Germany (of “Pied Piper” fame), where he worked until his death in 1841.
Although effective when given by mouth, morphine’s use as an analgesic (painkiller) exploded after the Scottish physician Alexander Wood perfected the hypodermic syringe in 1853. It was indiscriminately administered to wounded soldiers during the American Civil War (1861–1865), Prussian-Austrian War (1866), and Franco-Prussian War (1870), and as a result, the prevalence of postwar morphine addiction was so high that it was termed the army disease and the soldier’s disease.
Newer drugs may cause less abuse and addiction than morphine and they may act longer or be more effective by mouth, but no drug has been discovered that is more effective than morphine for the relief of severe pain of all kinds. It acts by reducing the patient’s subjective awareness of pain—i.e., the patient still feels the pain but is no longer bothered by it. In addition to being used to relieve pain, morphine-related drugs are used for the treatment of cough (codeine, dextromethorphan), diarrhea (Lomotil), heroin addiction, and poisoning by morphine-like drugs (naloxone). Morphine remains the gold standard against which all other analgesics are compared and is one of the most significant drugs ever discovered.
SEE ALSO Opium (c. 2500 BCE), Alkaloids (1806), Codeine (1832), Heroin (1898), Methadone (1947), Dextromethorphan (1958), Fentanyl (1968), Opioids (1973), OxyContin (1996).
Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, is depicted with Iris, the personification of the rainbow and messenger of the gods, in this 1811 painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.