Humans have used drugs of one sort or another for thousands of years. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 B.C. in China. But not until the 19th cent. A.D. were the active substances in drugs extracted. There followed a time when some of these newly discovered substances-morphine, laudanum, cocaine-were completely unregulated and prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of illnesses. They were available in patent medicines and sold by traveling tinkers, in drugstores, or through the mail. During the American Civil War, morphine was used freely, and wounded veterans returned home with their kits of morphine and hypodermic needles. Opium dens increased. By the early 1900s there were an estimated 250,000 addicts in the United States. The problems of addiction were recognized gradually. Legal measures against drug abuse in the United States were first established in 1875, when opium dens

Today morphine is used medicinally for severe pain, cough suppression, and sometimes before surgery. It is seldom used illicitly except by doctors and other medical personnel who have access to the drug. It is injected, taken orally or inhaled, or taken through rectal suppositories. Methadone treatment has been useful in curing morphine addiction.

• To enhance the strength and pain resistance of warriors to prepare them for battle, or to program them to kill

Some topics in this essay:
Related Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals Heroin, Pharmaceuticals Cocaine, Individual People, Pharmaceuticals Hallucinogens, Original Reasons, Pharmaceuticals Morphine, Substances Legal, CoAnon Alateen, Enforcement Administration, related pharmaceuticals, drug abuse, nervous system, section effects, lysergic acid, drug users, hallucinogenic drug, prescription drugs, anabolic steroids, substance abuse, central nervous system, drug addiction drug, drug enforcement administration, addiction drug abuse, related pharmaceuticals heroin,