Q 01/05

Eating which bagel topping, harvested from the plant that yields morphine, can cause a failed drug test?

A) Poppy seeds

B) Sesame seeds

C) Caraway seeds

D) Sunflower seeds

Answer · why

A) Poppy seeds

Poppy seeds can carry traces of opium from the pod, enough to register as opiates in a urine test. US federal testing raised its cut-off level in 1998...

Q 02/05

Morphine's discoverer named the drug after Morpheus, the Greek god of what?

A) Healing

B) Dreams

C) Death

D) Wine

Answer · why

B) Dreams

Dreams were the realm of Morpheus, who in Ovid's Metamorphoses enters them in the shape of mortal men. The drug was first called morphium before the m...

Q 03/05

Which drug did Bayer sell from 1898 as a cough remedy and supposedly safer substitute for morphine?

A) Aspirin

B) Cocaine

C) Heroin

D) Methadone

Answer · why

C) Heroin

Heroin is morphine with two acetyl groups added, and its trade name is said to come from the German word for heroic. An English chemist had first made...

Q 04/05

Which fictional Victorian detective sometimes uses morphine and injects cocaine in a seven-percent solution?

A) Hercule Poirot

B) C. Auguste Dupin

C) Father Brown

D) Sherlock Holmes

Answer · why

D) Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes reaches for both drugs mostly when he has no stimulating case to work on, to Dr Watson's dismay. Both were legal in 19th-century Engla...

Q 05/05

Which natural painkillers made in the brain have a name that is short for 'endogenous morphine'?

A) Enkephalins

B) Endorphins

C) Dynorphins

D) Endocannabinoids

Answer · why

B) Endorphins

Endorphins are peptides that block the perception of pain and lift the mood, and the brain releases them during hard exercise. Endogenous simply means...