Coca and Cocaine

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
1. ERYTHROXYLON COCA. 2. BACK OF LEAF ( Full size .) 3. FLOWER ( enlarged .) 4. FRUIT.
THEIR HISTORY, MEDICAL AND ECONOMIC USES, AND MEDICINAL PREPARATIONS.
BY WILLIAM MARTINDALE, F.C.S.
Late Examiner of the Pharmaceutical Society, and Late Teacher of Pharmacy and Demonstrator of Materia Medica at University College.
JOINT AUTHOR OF THE “EXTRA PHARMACOPŒIA.”
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON: H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER STREET, W.C. 1892.
LONDON: PRINTED AT 74-76, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S-INN-FIELDS.
I have been induced to compile this brochure, as supplementary to the short description of Coca given in the “Extra Pharmacopœia,” 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 anæsthetic 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.