Opium has been known for millennia to relieve pain and its use for surgical analgesia has been recorded for several centuries. The Sumerian clay tablet (about 2100 BC) is considered to be the world's oldest recorded list of medical prescriptions.
In the 1600s, many European doctors gave their patients opium to relieve pain. By the 1800s, ether and chloroform were introduced as anesthetics for surgery. Some doctors were concerned, however, about the ethics of operating on unconscious patients.
Opium and its derivatives constitute the oldest effective method of pain relief and have been used in childbirth for several thousand years, along with numerous folk medicines and remedies.
In some cultures, rattles, gongs and other devices were believed to frighten painful devils out of a person's body. Amerindian healers sucked on pain pipes held against a person's skin to "pull" out pain or illness. Many ancient doctors apparently figured their patients needed a hole in the head.
The variety of analgesic remedies and the preferred use of particular plants (such as mandrake, henbane, and poppy) is just as remarkable as the many different forms of application: drug-soaked sponges, compresses and plasters, oils, ointments, smoke and smelling salts, drinks and waters, pills and troches, powders, ...
Opium tincture or laudanum was widely used in the 19th century as a pain killer or sleeping aid; it was highly addictive, leading to many of its users forming a drug addiction.
The Egyptians employed many pain-relieving strategies. Opium was widely yet controversially used. A less-debated joint pain adjuvant was Salix alba, which is the salicyl bark from the willow tree (3). The earliest surgery for which analgesia was performed was circumcision.
Snake vine (Tinospora smilacina) Communities in Central Australia used to crush sections of the vine to treat headaches, rhumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory-related ailments. The sap and leaves were sometimes used to treat sores and wounds.
Treatments included a poultice made from Cassytha filiformis (Dodder Laurel), a paste made from the mashed leaves and stems of Tinospora smilacina (Snake vine) and the soaked bark of the Acacia melanoxylon (Blackwood wattle). Steam baths were created by placing wet water weed on hot stones.
Over 3500 years ago Egyptians used opium-based compounds (still the most potent source of pain relief). Physicians in ancient Greece regularly used willow bark, which contains salicylic acid (the active ingredient of aspirin) to treat pain, while the Romans used plants like mandrake and belladonna.
India has one of the world's oldest medical systems. It is known as Ayurvedic medicine (Ayurveda). Ayur in Sanskrit means “life” and veda means “science” or “knowledge”; thus ayurveda is the science of life.
These natural products include the heart drug digoxin, which is isolated from a flower called foxglove; the antibiotic penicillin, which comes from mold; and painkillers like morphine, which is made from poppies.
Opium derivatives, including morphine, became widely used pain relievers, particularly in the 1800s.
Quinine had been used in the West since 1640 to treat the high temperature, fever and headache caused by malaria.
Willow bark and other salicylate-containing plants have been used for pain relief since ancient times. For example, the Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates described the analgesic effects of willow bark; Galen was the first to record its antipyretic and anti-inflammatory effects.
Marijuana was the most common substance used, followed by amphetamines or speed. More than half (51%) of Indigenous males reported that they had ever used illicit substances compared with 36% of Indigenous females.
Besides being a reliever of hunger and thirst, the Pituri is also an hallucinogenic. Only the elders of a tribe were allowed to chew the leaves and this obviously helped them maintain their position within the tribe.
Laudanum, a popular tincture containing opium and alcohol and other ingredients such as honey, saffron, or cinnamon, was widely used—and completely legal—until the late 1800s. It was commonly used for pain, menstrual cramps, sleep aid, and a wide variety of other ailments both in children and adults.
Corydalis Root (Yan Hu Suo)
The tuber or root of this go-to herbal medicine in Traditional Chinese Medicine (which shares the same flowering plant family as poppies!) has been used by martial artists in China for centuries to treat the aches + pain that come with martial arts.
The aboriginal people of Australia have traditionally used tea tree oil as an antiseptic (germ killer) and an herbal medicine. Today, external use of tea tree oil is promoted for various conditions such as acne, athlete's foot, lice, nail fungus, cuts, mite infection at the base of the eyelids, and insect bites.
The British settlement in Australia was not peaceful. Aboriginal people were moved off their traditional land and killed in battles or by hunting parties. European diseases such as measles and tuberculosis also killed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Drugs in ancient Rome were used for a variety of purposes. Cannabis and opium were used as medication to treat conditions such as insomnia or earaches. Roman doctors noticed the addictiveness of these drugs. They wrote that cannabis induced "a warm feeling" and opium was dangerous when diluted.
1803: Morphine is discovered
After conducting several years of experiments (mainly on himself), Sertürner recognized the alkaloid was a significantly stronger pain reliever and cough suppressant than opium itself. He named the compound after the Greek god of sleep, Morpheus, because it made people sleepy.
During the nineteenth century the most important breakthroughs in pain treatment included general and local anesthesia as well as analgesic drugs from morphine to anti-inflammatory agents. They succeeded in taking the terror out of the agonizing pain of surgery and dramatic courses of diseases.