Heroin (diacetylmorphine) was not prescribed as a medicine much before 1900, but its preparation had already been reported in 1874 by C. R. Wright at St. Mary's Hospital in London.
By boiling anhydrous morphine alkaloid for several hours with acetic anhydride he was able to isolate acetylated morphine derivatives. The extreme acetylated derivative which he obtained, he called “Tetra acetyl morphine”. Its potential was not recognized until the late 1890s, when a German pharmaceutical company began marketing it for a variety of respiratory ailments. Within a year it was being exported to 23 countries.

Its addictive qualities were formally noted in the British Pharmaceutical Codex in 1911. Two years later, the German pharmaceutical company ceased production.

[Heroin and Contergan, M. Russeva, GRIN Verlag 2007.
How aspirin turned hero, R. Askwith, Sunday Times, 13 September 1998]




And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Heroin (diacetylmorphine) was not prescribed as a medicine much before 1900, but its preparation had already been reported in 1874 by C. R. Wright at St. Mary's Hospital in London.
By boiling anhydrous morphine alkaloid for several hours with acetic anhydride he was able to isolate acetylated morphine derivatives. The extreme acetylated derivative which he obtained, he called “Tetra acetyl morphine”. Its potential was not recognized until the late 1890s, when a German pharmaceutical company began marketing it for a variety of respiratory ailments. Within a year it was being exported to 23 countries.

Its addictive qualities were formally noted in the British Pharmaceutical Codex in 1911. Two years later, the German pharmaceutical company ceased production.

[Heroin and Contergan, M. Russeva, GRIN Verlag 2007.
How aspirin turned hero, R. Askwith, Sunday Times, 13 September 1998]




And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.