You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [69]
While American history places famous cowboys of the period, like Wild Bill Hickok and Kit Carson, in the taverns of the Wild West, they actually frequented opium dens more often than saloons. It was not uncommon for the cowhands to spend several days and nights at a time in these dens in a constant dream state, as they became physically addicted to the drug. Eventually, opium was even promoted as a cure for alcoholism.
In 1803, German pharmacist Friedrich Serturner isolated and described an opium alkaloid that he named morphine, after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus. It was considered a wonder drug because it eliminated severe pain associated with medical operations or traumatic injuries. It left the user in a completely numb euphoric dream state.
By the mid-1850s morphine was available throughout the United States and became important to the medical profession. Other opiate derivatives such as codeine and papervine were also used. The benefits of using the drug to treat severe pain were considered nothing short of remarkable to doctors of the time. Unfortunately, the addictive properties of the drug went virtually unnoticed until after the Civil War.
During the war, morphine was doled out like candy by army surgeons, who were surrounded by suffering and had few remedies to offer. Nearly 10 million opiate pills were issued to Union soldiers, along with 2.8 million ounces of other opium-based preparations. Morphine was used to treat not just wounds but chronic campaign diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, and malaria.
It became even more popular after the war as invalided veterans sought relief from constant pain. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were roughly 200,000 morphine addicts in the United States. Because of the drug’s source, morphine addiction was commonly called the army disease. Doctors became perplexed and were completely in the dark as to how to treat this new epidemic.
In 1874, an English research chemist, C. R. Allder-Wright, working at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, boiled morphine with acetic acid over a stove for several hours to produce diacetylmorphine, a white, odorless, bitter crystalline powder. After feeding the new drug to his dogs, he noted that it induced “great prostration, fear, sleepiness speedily following the administration and a slight tendency to vomiting,” and decided to discontinue his experiments.
In 1897, chemist Felix Hoffmann of the Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany, discovered a new process for modifying salicyclic acid to produce acetylsalicyclic acid (ASA). This compound had been isolated before as a remedy for fever and inflammation, and the healing powers of salicylates (derived from willow bark) had been known for centuries. Hoffmann, however, had created a reliable process for making it.
Heinrich Dreser directed product development for Bayer, where he was in charge of testing the efficacy and safety of new drugs. He was admired for his thorough, methodical approach, and for his innovations in testing. Dreser was, in fact, the first chemist to use animal experimentation on an industrial scale. He had also negotiated a special deal with Bayer that guaranteed him a share of the profits from products he launched.
Dreser tested this new drug (later to be named aspirin) but, after cursory consideration, rejected it. Ostensibly, his objection was that ASA would have an “enfeebling” action on the heart. “The product has no value,” he determined. Diacetylmorphine was also synthesized in the Bayer laboratory by Hoffmann, two weeks after he first synthesized ASA. The work was initiated by Dreser, who was already aware of Allder-Wright’s earlier research, even though he subsequently implied that diacetylmorphine was an original Bayer invention.
By early 1898, Dreser tested diacetylmorphine on sticklebacks, frogs and