Used plant part Ripe seeds. The drug opium is prepared from the unripe capsules. Sensoric quality Nutty and pleasant.
Opium contains two family of alkaloids.
Most of these have their special field of application in modern medicine. Official opium production is 2000 tons per year, mostly by India and Turkey. Probably, the name ultimately was taken from a Mediterranean tongue now lost. The Ilias is, together with the contemporary Odysseia , by far the oldest European poetry and was probably fixed from oral tradition in the 8.th century, but it tells of events that might have happened five hundred years ago. It gives a unique insight in the thought and life of the ending Bronze Age for it describes or at least mentions much of everyday life.