Evidently, the Greeks and Romans had trouble falling asleep following their wild partying, as several other herbal sleep inducers were regularly prescribed by doctors as long ago as 300 B.C. These included the bark of the mandrake plant, the seeds of a herb called henbane, St. John’s Wort and lettuce juice. The Arab world too appeared to be needing assistance with shut-eye, as physicians of the Middle East prescribed similar formulas to those of their Greek and Roman counterparts.

In England and Europe, apothecaries of the Middle Ages sold potions known as “drowsy syrups” and sponges soaked in wine and sleep-inducing herbs.

It wasn’t until 1805 that sleep aids took on a pharmaceutical slant. In that year, chemist Frederick Setumer synthesized opium and other advances in sleep drugs were quick to follow. By the middle of the century, two new drugs became popular as sleep inducers—both central nervous system depressants. These were chloral hydrate and bromide. Various bromides were popular solutions to a restless sleep until the early 20th century.

Barbiturates took over from bromides in the early 1920s, although barbituric acid was created by Prussian chemist, Adolf von Baeyer, in 1863. One of Baeyer’s students combined it with a diethyl derivative to create a powerful and effective sleeping drug—the forerunner of phenobarbitol.

However effective, the barbiturates were also highly addictive. In the 1970s, sleeping aids known as benzodiazepines were developed. These have been improved over the years, and are less addictive than barbiturates. Since the 1980s, drugs known as hypnotics have been used successfully to help short-term or occasional insomnia. Hypnotics induce sleep by causing drowsiness.