Incorrect: Freidrich Bayer Fabriken of Germany was trying to create codeine from morphine. Instead, the experiment produced an acetylated form of morphine one to two times more potent than morphine. The head of Bayer research coined the name Heroin, from the greek root word heros, which was to mean the drug was “heroic”. Bayer scientists were not the first to make heroin, but made it large scale quantities and commercialized Heroin as their brand— as a “Sedative for Coughing” (and this was not directed at children, which Paregoric, an opium distillate, was— usu. for diarrhea)
So, from 1898 through to 1910, diamorphine was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. NOn-addictive— imagine that- and they marketed this with personal injection kits with syringes and mixing vials—incredible. The same Bayer that, with I.G.Farben enslaved millions of Germans from death camps and factory camps, notably in Auschwitz II. What a nice group of helping doctors.