If you’ve ever had a serious accident or major surgery, you may well have been given morphine at the hospital. This strong painkiller blocks pain signals traveling from nerves to the brain. In 1975, at the University of Aberdeen, Dr. Hans Kosterlitz and colleague John Hughes discovered a natural version of this substance in humans. They identified a chemical, produced by the pituitary gland, that similarly reduces pain and creates a sense of happiness or well-being. Because of its similarities to the well-known opiate, it was named the "endorphin," borrowing from "morphine."
To Sleep, Perchance To Dream
Morphine as a pain-relieving medication was discovered in the early 1800s by the self-taught German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner, who investigated which element of opiate poppies produced pain relief. He named it after Roman poet Ovid’s god of dreams, Morpheus, for its sleep-inducing quality.
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Morpheus is a dream-shaper who happens to sleep in a cave full of poppy seeds. His special power is the ability to influence the dreams of high-status individuals, such as kings, gods, and heroes.
The ancient Greeks and Romans certainly knew about the sleep-inducing and narcotic properties of poppies. In addition to Morpheus, the Greek gods Hypnos (Sleep), Nyx (Night), and Thanatos (Death) were depicted as wreathed with poppies or carrying poppies in their hands. The ancient physician Hippocrates also frequently mentioned poppy as a hypnotic and narcotic drug in his writing. In modern references, morphine is known by a slew of slang or street names that include "dreamer" and "god’s drug," linking to its ancient origins.
Self-Made Morphine
Several centuries after the time of the ancient Greeks, in the mid-1970s, endorphins were discovered by Hughes and Kosterlitz. Their first name for the molecules found in pigs’ brains was "enkephalins," which comes from the Greek for "in the brain." After more research revealed the link to opiate receptors, they landed on the name "endorphins." The word combines "endogenous" and "morphine" — "endo" means "inside," stemming from the Greek endon, and genus is a Latin term denoting a type or kind of thing. "Endorphin," then, makes substantial linguistic sense as a reference to an internal morphine-like drug that is produced naturally by the body.
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