Beneath the Poppy's Veil: Exploring Ethnobotanical Treasures, Healing Power, and Biogenic Alchemy of Poppy Seeds

1. Introduction

Medicine and human civilization have a long history of working together to benefit the world through their various applications (Haider, Batool, & Haleem, 2012). Researchers are becoming increasingly interested in learning about the ability of various drugs to maintain health and cure diseases. It revealed the remarkable nature of herbal medicines for disease treatment. Herbal drugs are made from plants and their parts, such as the bark, stem, roots, flowers, leaves, fruits, and seeds (Mamedov & Craker, 2012). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), conventional medicine is used to treat 80% of the world's population (Shankar & Liao, 2004).

The poppy plant is a traditional plant that is used for therapeutic, nutritional, and systematic purposes (Marciano, Panicker, Liddil, Lindgren, & Sweder, 2018a) known colloquially as “Opium Poppy” (Haber, Pergolizzi, & LeQuang, 2019). The scientific name for Papaver somniferum is Ranunculates, the family Papaveraceae, and the genus Papaver specie is P.somniferum. Various varieties of Papaver somniferum plant are found all over the world (S. Chaudhary, Aslam, & Siddiqui, 2019) . The species name, somniferum, is derived from the Latin word for “sleep inducing.” Opium is a liquid derived from the poppy plant. Opiate is a substance derived from opium, whereas opioids are not derived directly from poppy plants but have morphine-like effects. Opium alkaloid's pharmacological properties have been known since ancient times. Man has been using opium poppy extract for pain relief for at least 3500 years. Turkey, India, Australia, Hungary, Spain, France, and China are among the major opium poppy cultivating countries. Other countries that grow opium poppy include Afghanistan, Burma, Mexico, Pakistan, and India. Opium poppy has been used and cultured in Central and Western Europe since 4600-3800 BC, according to archeological data. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recommended white poppy sap (Mishra et al., 2013). Poppies have long been associated with honor. Women cultivated opium poppy plants for medicinal purposes in the second century. In the sixth century, Arabian and Islamic countries used opium as a treatment and narcotic. Asians used the poppy plant as a drug in the 17th century. In the nineteenth century, Europeans began trading drugs, and opium wars erupted, with China gaining control of the industry (Mishra et al., 2013). Poppy seeds were used as a dressing for bakery products by Greeks and Europeans in the second century. Around the 7th century A.D., the opium poppy probably spread to China. In China, the opium poppy was known as the “cure all,” and people relied on it for the treatment of all diseases. Chinese Despite Chinese emperors' efforts to prohibit opium use for smoking, the infamous “opium wars” of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 with the British Empire failed, giving rise to a few influence rivalries alongside the opium agriculture moving to China (A. G. Wheeler, 2019). This resulted in the incorrect consumption and smoking of opium all over the world, beginning in China. Because China was unable to manage national opium production and consumption, the world was subjected to widespread addiction. Opium poppy has pain relieving properties. During the Civil War, morphine was frequently utilized as an analgesic for injured troops because of the widespread availability of opium produced in the United States during the nineteenth century. Opium poppy extract was used in ancient times to alleviate the pain of surgery (Canton-Alvarez, 2019).