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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Market in the United States and elsewhere. More than 100 years after its invention, it continues to be a popular drug, with uses extending far beyond those envisaged by its original creators. SmithKline Beecham eventually purchased Sterling’s worldwide over-the-counter pharmaceutical business and, in turn, sold the U.S. portion, including aspirin, to Bayer for a sum of $1 billion.Heroin: Acetylated MorphineHeroin is another story. Dreser, while still a professor in Göttingen, had worked on the effect of codeine—a weaker derivative of opium than morphine—on breathing. He instructed Hoffmann to acetylate morphine with the objective of producing codeine; the result instead was a substance that was named heroin. But the same compound had already been discovered in 1874 by an English chemist and so was not patentable. Before the extreme addictiveness of heroin was recognized, however, it was widely sold by Bayer and other companies to suppress heavy coughs, to relieve the pain of childbirth and of serious war injuries, to prepare patients for anesthesia, and to control certain mental disorders. Since the 1930s it has been banned in most countries.Featured image: Courtesy of Bayer Corporation.
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