Oxycodon – A psychopharmacologic-historical note on an opium analgesic

Since morphine was identified as the most important active component of raw opium by Séguin and Sertürner in 1817 pharmacological research has been aimed at both enhancing the analgetic and antidepressant properties of opium alcaloids and minimizing the problems of dependency which having been known since the self-description of Albrecht von Haller at the latest. In this connection the focus of psychopharmalogical attention has mainly been directed on heroine, developed by Bayer in 1898. While nowadays this substance is only known as an illegal addictive drug there is still an analgesic in use that had been developed parallely by E. Merck: Oxycodone, which was first produced by Martin Freund and Edmund Speyer as a semi-synthetic thebaine derivate in 1915. Oxycodone, being globally distributed under the trademark Eukodal® from 1919 to 1990 and again since the mid–1990s under the trademarks Oxygesic® and OxyCotin®, is an example of many aspects of 20th century pharmacology. These do not only include the identification of the substance, the definition of its indications or the fate of its developers as German pharmacologists of Jewish descent, but also the phenomenon of „famous patients“: the long-term treatment of the well-known Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner administering Eukodal might well have been one of the reasons for his suicide during a depressive phase in the Summer of 1938.