Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0917801 (insomnia)
 10,606 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Thomas de Quincey, a British writer of 19th century, suffered insomnia from the age of 17 years. In his famous "Confessions of an English-Opium Eater" (1822), he described a symptomatology that could concord with restless legs syndrome long before he became addicted to opium. In this report, we analyze his clinical description and the circumstances leading to his opium addiction.
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PMID:Thomas de Quincey and his restless legs symptoms as depicted in "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater". 2066 97

Alleviation of pain is a major objective in medicine to increase the quality of life. Analgesics are agents that relieve pain by elevating the pain threshold without disturbing consciousness or altering other sensory modalities. Opium is an isoquinoline alkaloid obtained from poppy plant Papaver somniferum (Papaveraceae). Codeine is an alkaloid prepared from opium or morphine by methylation. Codeine is used as a central analgesic, sedative, hypontic, antinonciceptive, antiperistaltic, and is also recommended in tuberculosis and insomnia due to incessant coughing. The literature information relate mostly to the determination of codeine active components using Gas chromatography (GC), Capillary electrophoresis, Thin layer chromatography, High-performance thin layer chromatography, UV-Vis Spectrophotometry, High-performance liquid chromatography and GC in combination with Mass spectroscopy. This contribution provides a comprehensive review of its analytical and pharmacologic profile of codeine.
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PMID:Recent updates on codeine. 2378 22

Poppy extract accompanied the human infant for more than 3 millenia. Motives for its use included excessive crying, suspected pain, and diarrhea. In antiquity, infantile sleeplessness was regarded as a disease. When treatment with opium was recommended by Galen, Rhazes, and Avicenna, baby sedation made its way into early medical treatises and pediatric instructions. Dabbing maternal nipples with bitter substances and drugging the infant with opium were used to hasten weaning. A freerider of gum lancing, opiates joined the treatment of difficult teething in the 17th century. Foundling hospitals and wet-nurses used them extensively. With industrialization, private use was rampant among the working class. In German-speaking countries, poppy extracts were administered in soups and pacifiers. In English-speaking countries, proprietary drugs containing opium were marketed under names such as soothers, nostrums, anodynes, cordials, preservatives, and specifics and sold at the doorstep or in grocery stores. Opium's toxicity for infants was common knowledge; thousands of cases of lethal intoxication had been reported from antiquity. What is remarkable is that the willingness to use it in infants persisted and that physicians continued to prescribe it for babies. Unregulated trade, and even that protected by governments, led to greatly increased private use of opiates during the 19th century. Intoxication became a significant factor in infant mortality. As late as 1912, the International Hague Convention forced governments to implement legislation that effectively curtailed access to opium and broke the dangerous habit of sedating infants.
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PMID:Lethal Lullabies: A History of Opium Use in Infants. 2616 33