The Discovery Of Morpheus: The Chemistry Of Alkaloids

Humans have been used alkaloids- containing plants for many beneficial and entertainment purposes since ancient times. for example, the medical plants known at least around 2000 BC. there are toxic alkaloids such as aconitine and tubocurarine, were used since antiquity for poisoning arrows. In the 19th century, studies on alkaloids began. In 1804, Friedrich Sertürner, a German chemist, began his studies on alkaloids on through the isolation of opium a "soporific principle" ,which he called "morphium" in honor of Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.T he French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, who discovered quinine (1820) and strychnine (1818), helped in knowing the chemistry of alkaloids in the early years of its development. Several other alkaloids were discovered around that time, including xanthine (1817), atropine (1819), caffeine (1820), coniine (1827), nicotine (1828), colchicine (1833), sparteine (1851), and cocaine (1860). In 1886, Albert ladenburg gave the first complete synthesis of alkanoids. He produced coniine by reacting 2-methylpyridine with acetaldehyde and reducing the resulting 2-propenyl pyridine with sodium. Many scientists studied alkaloids and by 2008 there were more than 12,000 alkaloids had been identified.
The development of the chemistry of alkaloids was accelerated by the emergence of spectroscopic (the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation) and chromatographic (a laboratory technique for the separation of a mixture ) methods in the 20th