Heroin
The word Heroin was once trademarked by the drug manufacturer Bayer, marketed as a cough syrup, and containing diacetylated morphine, the drug now known as heroin. Bayer did not invent heroin. That was accomplished by Alder Wright at St. Mary’s Medical School in London in 1874. But the German company Bayer did find a commercial use for the drug, naming it Heroin as a brand name from the German word heroisch, meaning strong or heroic.
Bayer marketed the drug as an alternative cough medicine, a safer and more effective choice than those containing morphine or codeine. Heroin was introduced to the market in 1898, and was frequently recommended by physicians as being less addictive than morphine, and a better cough suppressant to boot. Neither morphine nor heroin required a physician’s prescription, they were available over the counter.
Because it was deemed to be less addictive, Heroin was recommended for use by children in controlling coughs and colds. Bayer marketed Heroin to pharmacists and apothecaries, who often mixed and prepared their own cough syrups, lozenges, and other medicines for the use of their customers. Bayer provided instructions describing effective dosage levels directly to the customers, the mixtures were thus prepared based on the pharmacist’s knowledge of the product and the demands of his customer. There was little control by the medical profession, although doctors could and often did make recommendations to their patients to forward to the apothecary.
Numerous patent medicines of the day were based on opium products, as well as cocaine. Cough and cold medications and various tonics contained morphine, and the combination of several patent medicines could severely intoxicate the consumer. Doctors frequently recommended laudanum, a compound which contains all of the opium alkaloids, as a painkiller and cough suppressant. It too, was available over the counter, and its use was uncontrolled. During the Gilded Age laudanum was widely recommended by doctors for the treatment of menstrual cramps.
Heroin as a brand was removed from the US market in 1910. In 1914 the United States passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act to control the use of opioids, although heroin was still able to be prescribed by physicians. In 1924 the drug was banned from the United States entirely. Heroin is no longer a trademarked name, Bayer lost its rights to many trademarks following the First World War, as part of the recriminations imposed on Germany in the Versailles Treaty.