Our little story begins from the Middle Ages and with two powerful and very profitable products... Opium & Oil.
In 1803 Friedrich Sertuerner discovers an active ingredient in opium which if you dissolved in acid and then neutralizing it with ammonia result of this is... Morphine.
In 1803 Friedrich Sertuerner discovers an active ingredient in opium which if you dissolved in acid and then neutralizing it with ammonia result of this is... Morphine.
Morphine was not only the first alkaloid to be extracted from opium, but the first ever alkaloid to be isolated from plant.
In 1827 E. Merck & Company of Darmstadt, begins the commercial manufacturing of morphine for healing purposes. It would become a dominant manufacturer of morphine, codeine and cocaine.
When we think of Bayer we think of aspirin, definitly not heroin.... but in 1895 Bayer Company of Elberfeld, finds that diluting morphine with acetyls produces a drug without the common morphine side effects and the name for this new compound... Heroin
And where you find acetyls to produce heroin? Where did the acetyls come from? Well, just like today they come from petrochemicals, and sudenly all this led us to a name.... "John D. Rockefeller" the oil baron...