Coca And Cocaine Their History Medical And Economic Uses And Medicinal Preparations

I have been induced to compile this brochure, as supplementary to the short description of Coca given in the “Extra Pharmacopeia,” on account of the attention this plant, and its alkaloid Cocaine, have excited during the past eighteen months. Although made known to us soon after the conquest of Peru by Pizarro — more than three centuries ago — the accounts travellers have given of Coca have only received about the same credence, and been treated with about the same reverence as we pay to a myth. We have considered the writers as having been overcredulous, as in some cases they undoubtedly were. It was thought the use of the leaves by the Indians of Peru was only that of a masticatory, which simply increased the flow of saliva. We looked upon its so-called nutritive properties, or rather its hunger and thirst-appeasing effects, as well as its power to ward off fatigue and relieve oppressive respiration during mountain ascents, as superstitions unworthy of more attention than the betel-nut mastication practised in India. The surgical uses of Cocaine as a local anaesthetic have, however, to some extent dispelled these illusions, and we have been more ready to receive the accounts of early as well as recent travellers, thinking “there may be something in them.” I have endeavoured to reproduce what many have written, as much as possible in their own words, or translations of them. The old habit of Coca chewing has clung to the Peruvian Indians after their “power, civilisation, language, alphabets, writings, and even old religions have disappeared,” says Johnston, “the common-life customs and the bodily features of the people have alone survived.” By him Coca is classed among the “Narcotics we indulge in,” along with Tobacco, Hop, Poppy and Lettuce, Indian Hemp, Areca or Betel-nut, Ava or Kava, Red Thorn Apple (Datura sanguinea) fruit, also in use among the Indians of the Andes, Siberian Fungus or Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria), and Sweet Gale (Myrica Gale), formerly used to give bitterness and strength to the fermented liquors of the ancient Britons. But physiologists have more recently classed it with Tea, Coffee, Maté, Kola Nut, and Cocoa — the Theine- (Methyl-Theobromine) and Theobromine-yielding plants — although Cocaine has no chemical alliance with these principles. As a beverage to substitute for tea or coffee, a decoction or an infusion of Coca is worthy of attention at the present time. The Indian use of it in moderation seems to prolong life, without much need of sleep or food, or even the desire for these, although in excess it has, no doubt, a degrading effect. A taste for infusion or decoction of Coca or its pharmaceutical preparations is easily acquired; if a good sample of leaves be used it is not even at first disagreeable...FROM THE BOOKS

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Facts about the exploitation of the coca leaf and cocaine.

Sheds light into the early history of the cocaine industry when cocaine was a legal drug manufactured by major pharmaceutical companies. This book contains annotated translations of three rare, previously untranslated, late nineteenth and early twentieth century books on the chemistry, botany and ceonomics of the cocaine industry, with emphasis on the little known role of Netherlands and Indonesia.

Originally published in 1901, the following description comes from the first edition: This work, although of a scientific nature, has not been written exclusively for scientists, for the theme is of so universal a scope as to be worthy the attention of all who are concerned in lessening the trials of humanity, or who which to shape the necessities of life through a more useful and consequently a more happy being. Centuries before the introduction of cocaine to anaesthetic uses, the world had been amazed by accounts of the energy creating properties ascribed to a plant intimately associated with the rites and customs of the ancient Peruvians, and first made known through the chroniclers of Spanish conquest in America. The history of this plant, known as Coca, is the history of the Incan race and is entwined throughout the associations of the vast socialistic Empire of those early people of Peru. The characteristics and botanical peculiarities of Coca, and the economic uses of plants of the family to which it belongs are described, and an effort is made to harmonize the early uses of the substance -- which are now shown to been of necessity, and not of luxury -- with its present employment, through facts of modern physiology. No effort has been made to make this work in any sense a book of Coca therapy, but a study of the early necessities and the hypothesis here advanced as to the rationale of its empirical uses will doubtless be ample to impress the true status of Coca, and will suggest its application in the affairs of modern life for conditions similar to those which originally demanded.