• Question: What is the strongest medicent?

    Asked by anon-218294 to Emma, Anna on 21 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Emma Markham

      Emma Markham answered on 21 Jun 2019:

      I would say the strongest medicine we currently have is the painkiller morphine and its derivatives. Morphine comes from the Opium poppy and is able to stop pain by blocking the pain signals from getting to the brain. It is really important in surgery and when people have an accident and break their leg for example. Unfortunately, morphine is also addictive, so we have to be careful how we use it and for how long, because our bodies will want more and it will be hard to stop taking it. This is why you can only get morphine from a hospital.

    • Photo: Anna Gardner

      Anna Gardner answered on 21 Jun 2019:

      Morphine is the strongest medicine we have currently. We discovered this in poppy plants. Its amazing that so many of our medicines are derived from plants. Sometimes they have even been discovered by accident!
      If you wanted to study botanical medicines, you could study Tropical Medicine. This was something I wish I had studied as it is so fascinating! There any huge amounts of the tropical rain forests and jungles that have not yet been explored fully and within these there will be medicines that have not yet been discovered. Who knows, maybe you could discover an even stronger medicine 🙂

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