Learn how residue trapped inside a Xerxes-era alabaster jar revealed a long-overlooked tradition of opium in ancient Egypt.

Examination of an ancient alabaster vase in the Yale Peabody Museum's Babylonian Collection has revealed traces of opiates, ...

Where there's smoke: a 19th-century engraving of opium addicts - Archive Collection / Alamy Stock Photo There are rumours that swirl in the writing world: all the publishing houses of the UK now have ...

NEW DELHI, (IANS) – Opium nearly smoked out China, made Britain acquire tainted wealth, laid the foundation of the fortunes of many a notorious trading house, and made several early 19th-century ...

In a decade-long operation, the CIA modified poppy seeds and dropped them by the billions from aircraft over Afghanistan in ...

Novelist/biographer Martin Booth's sprawling history of opium tracks the drug from its initial use as a powerful and effective, if often misused, medicine and anesthetic through the development and ...

Part 1. Opium in antiquity. The mysterious origins of the opium poppy ; Papyruses and poppies ; A journey around the Mediterranean. Part 2. Opium and the birth of modern medicine. Classic cures, ...

After the mid-18th century, when the British East India Co. was importing tea from China, few could have guessed that the industry would be revolutionized by a different plant: the opium poppy. Over ...