Chemical traces of opium found in an ancient Egyptian alabaster vase shows it had a widespread use. An ancient alabaster vase ...

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the elegant stone jars buried with Tutankhamun, their inscriptions intact but their ...

The very high incidence of oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in Golestan Province in northeastern Iran was suggested by studies in the 1970s as partly due to opium use, which is not uncommon ...

Of all plants used in the field of medicine, none has been as widely employed – nor has helped to save as many lives and ease suffering – as the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. The plant and its ...

AHMEDABAD: It's in the folklore, it's almost a way of life. In several pockets of Gujarat, especially Saurashtra and North Gujarat, it's a tradition - consuming opium ...

The Mishmi Hills in Arunachal Pradesh – part of the eastern Himalayas in northeast India – has become notorious for illegal opium cultivation over the past two decades. Authorities have failed to take ...

Robert Morrison has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Parts of this essay draw on material first published in his biography of Thomas De Quincey.