As early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some physicians suspected that opium was addictive and that its continuous use was dangerous. In The Mysteries of Opium Reveal'd , a 1701 publication, Dr. John Jones of Oxford listed more than one hundred treatments that used opium. According to Jones, the drug relieved distress, anxiety, and a multitude of other health problems. However, he also pointed out that patients experienced pain if they suddenly stopped using the drug. "The effects of sudden leaving off the uses of opium after long and lavish use therefore [were] even great and intolerable distresses, anxieties and depressions of the spirit, which commonly end in a most miserable death, attended with strange agonies."He went on to explain that by returning to their usual dose of opium, their agonizing symptoms quickly disappeared, a sure indicator of addiction.
Concerns about opium's addictive nature led scientists to study the compound.....
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