Morphine First Isolated

German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner isolated morphine from opium poppy between 1803 and 1805, publishing his findings in 1806. He named the substance "morphium" after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, after observing its sleep-inducing properties in animal and self-experimentation. This marked the first isolation of an active alkaloid from any plant, establishing the field of alkaloid chemistry. Sertürner's extraction process demonstrated that a single compound, rather than the whole opium preparation, was responsible for the analgesic effect.