Opium History

Opium has long history that reaches back to its cultivation on Mesopotamia in 3400 B.C. when the Sumerians referred to it as the joy plant and they were responsible for passing the use of this plant on to the Assyrians. In 1300 B.C. in Egypt the capitol city of Thebes began cultivating the opium poppy in what is known as their famous poppy fields.

During the reins of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and Tutankhamen trade of this poppy flourished and the trade so profitable that it reached across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece, Carthage and Europe.

In 1100 B.C. the people on the island of Cyprus manufactured the first knives of surgical precision to be used in extracting opium from the poppies. In 460 B.C. Hippocrates acknowledged useful narcotic, found in the poppy for treating internal diseases, epidemics and diseases isolate females. At the same time he dismissed any attributes to magic this plant might have. In 330 B.C. Alexander the Great takes opium to Persia and India.

In 400 A.D opium is taken to China by Arab traders, in 1020 A.D. Persia believes opium to be the most powerful stupefacient. 1200 A.D. there is a medical dissertation by the ancient Indians The Shodal Gradanigrah and Sharangdhar Samahita that spoke of their uses for the use of opium in treating diarrhea and sexual debility.

During the Holy Inquisition there is little written about opium as it came from the East and was thought to be in league with the Devil, but by 1527 records show opium was in use again for pain as written by Paracelsus about laudanum and there is record of opium being smoked.