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Opiates

HISTORY 

It's not known when men found opium for the first time - "the personal cure of God". Poppies were found in the burial of Neanderthals many times in Europe and Asia. It is supposed that the motherland of poppy is somewhere in Eastern Asia. In some ideograms from 5000 years ago poppy (med. - papaver) was described as the flower of happiness. Yet 3000 years ago it was spread in Egypt and Greece; it was mentioned in the papyrus of Ebert - an ancient Greek medical tractate from the 16th century BC. Some scientists believe that the drink described by Homer, given to Helena to forget sadness, is opium. 

In the ancient world the poppy was the symbol of the eternal dream and was often illustrated on the gravestones. The Greek goddess of agriculture Demetra was pictured together with wheat and ripened poppy. There are unclear evidences that the Spartan warriors ate poppy before battles, which made them not feel pain; this is quite probable, because many warriors of other nations used poppy for this purpose. Some great ancient physicians like Hippocrates knew its properties against pain very well. The Romans used it not only as a medicine and for pleasure, but also as a poison; the third wife of emperor Claudius, with the help of opium, poisoned her step-son in order her own to become the emperor. 

The use of opium was widely spread together with the Islam. In about 9th century Arabian merchants took it to India, from where it reached the Far East. In India opium was used centuries before that as a cure of asthma and bites of scorpions. The India physicians gave a smaller and smaller dose to the ill man by the end of the treatment, in order the ill not to feel the abstinent syndrome. In India small balls of opium, called "golly", were put under the tongue while tea is drunk; nowadays some long-distance drivers use them yet, because they believe it helps them drive for a long period of time. 

The story of opium in China is quite interesting and today many relate opium smoking to China. At a certain period only the richest Chinese people used it; it wasn't smoked back then. In the beginning of the 17th c. Dutch merchants began importing tobacco in China, which the Chinese quickly liked. The emperor's government banned tobacco import, because the trade balance got bad; this was also the period when a new special opium-pipe came to the market, which we  know well from the movies. The results from this politics soon appeared. In 1838 Chinese official declared that beginning with the officials and finishing with the craftsmen and traders, actors and servants, also women, monks - everybody smoked opium all day long. China gradually turned into an enormous market for opium users to choose from, for which the Chinese opium production wasn't enough to satisfy. The English started importing from India and Americans from Turkey. The opium use got too big and the Chinese government had to ban its import, too. The results were two Opium Wars (1840-1842 and 1856-1860), in the course of which England wanted to make China allow opium import: USA and other European countries also began fighting. China was much weaker than its enemies and soon lost the war. By 1913 in China about 1/4 of the population couldn't imagine life without opium. The Chinese emigrants also spread this habit in Europe and in the USA, where at the end of the 19th century more and more places for smoking opium appeared. Europeans quickly forgot their great efforts to save this habit in China.