Morphine was isolated from poppies more than 200 years ago but it still remains to be one of the best painkillers. That is not the only use of the wonder drug.

Physicians prescribe it sometimes with a combination of several other drugs to people having heart attacks. It can relieve the breathlessness of pulmonary edema. It reduces diarrhea and a famous physician of the early 20th century, William Osler, once called morphine as “God’s own medicine”.

A research published this week suggests that the compound might have at least one more use. About 700 troops who were wounded in Iraq received morphine immediately after an injury.

The researchers agreed that they would need to prove the benefits of morphine beyond doubt to prescribe it routinely to mental patients.

Troy Lisa Holbrook of the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, who headed the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said “I would be very reluctant to suggest any change in clinical practice. We need to understand a great deal more how this appears to work.”