What is the difference between heroin, opium and morphine, in simple terms?
Opium has gradually been superseded by a variety of purified, semi-synthetic, and synthetic opioids with progressively stronger effect. This process began in 1817, when Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner reported the isolation of pure morphine from opium The great advantage of purified morphine was that a patient could be treated with a known dose. Heroin, the first semi-synthetic opiate, was first synthesized in 1874, but was not pursued until its rediscovery by in 1897 by Felix Hoffmann at the Bayer pharmaceutical company in Elberfeld, Germany. From 1898 through to 1910 heroin was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children. Heroine is about 1.5 to 2 times more potent than morphine. Heroine is morphine with 2 acetyl groups added. Opium is the latex from the opium poppy pods. It’s the raw product. It drips out of the pod milky white, and then dries to brown and is collected.
