Alder Wright’s experiment.
Samaras hospital london chemist alirght attempted to modify morphine his experiment was simple he took morphine and added acetic acid this liquid he then heated to 85 degrees for several hours next he added ether to dissolve whatever he made after a few more chemical steps which we can’t reveal here a substance precipitated out as flakes yet wright didn’t realize
The importance of what he had made because of his testing methods wright gave some of this stuff to his dog to test it out and he must have given the dog far too much because the dog became very sick and vomited and so right sort of thought swirl was that the favourite family of dog and so he wrote up the experiment but he put the substance aside and didn’t study
It again however some 15 or so years later a chemist working from a german company called farben for billiton frederica buyer discovered wright’s description of his synthesis in the published literature and they tried it for themselves so as many good 19th century chemists did they tasted it to see what it did and one of them said that it made him feel absolutely
Wonderful and they were going to call it wound early the german for wonderful but another of his colleagues who had taken it said this makes me feel heroic heroic and so they called it heroin and that’s what we still call it today and if you look at some of the old formulations here are some tablets that buyer issued and this would have been used to relieve pain
But it was also used to treat cough this is an advert for stuff they called glick iran or gleeko heroin the adult dose it says is one teaspoonful every two hours for children of ten years or more the doses from one quarter to one half of a teaspoonful and for children of three years or more five to ten drops so you can see that this was being marketed for a wide
Range of individuals young and old there stated the new drug which was five times more potent than morphine had been cleared of all addictive properties whether for medical or recreational use heroin medicines were sold and millions over the counter with little regulation in the east or west and while heroin was thought to be safe one group of western crusaders
Started to raise alarm bells about the addictive
Transcribed from video
The Synthesis of Heroin By John Rotten
