ABSTRACT
Cultivation of the poppy plant dates back to 5000–4500 b.c. when the Sumerians, living in what is now Iraq, cultivated the plant to extract its opium. Derived from the Greek work for onion, opium was the name subsequently given to the juice of the poppy. The first recorded reference to poppy juice was by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in the third century b.c., but the medicinal value of opium was first described by Hippocrates, who praised it as a cathartic, styptic, and narcotic. By the seventeenth century, opium was being used throughout Europe; by the eighteenth century, it was being traded on a large scale. Increasing quantities were exported to the Far East, bringing prosperity to the many European countries that actively traded with China.
