A brand name gone wrong

"Did you know that Heroin was originally a brand name for cough syrup? In 1874, German scientists developed a formula for a painkiller that they thought would be less addictive than morphine. They simply added two acetyls to morphine to synthesize diacetylmorphine.

Heinrich Dreser, the head of Bayer drug development tried it on animals and humans. He, also, tried it on himself, which may have been the problem. He was very pleased with the results and decided it was a good treatment for many ailments especially respiratory ones like bronchitis, asthma and tuberculosis." Read more on Free Enterprise Land