Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition

by Angelo Mariani

There was, moreover, another object in favoring the use of Coca among the Indians. The latter were treated, as is known, as if they were beasts of burden, and their oppressors were not slow to recognize the fact that they furnished much better labor when they consumed Coca.

We shall see, further on, that the recognition of this fact, the correctness of which cannot be disputed, and which served to excite the rapacity of the conquering savages of that time, has become to-day the means of furnishing one of the most valuable aids to contemporary therapeutics.

The particular favor in which the plant was held in the beginning of the conquest, was destined to suffer some disturbance. In the seventeenth century, for example, the religious quibbles regaining the ascendancy in public affairs, some sedate theologians pretended that Coca was an aliment, and that under this name the use of it should be prohibited to young people and before the communion. The question was vigorously contested, and there is no doubt that the consumption of Coca would have sustained a very decided blow had not Prince don Alonzo de la Pina Montenegro declared that the plant contained no alimentary principle. This point we shall presently consider from a scientific point of view.

Although the inhabitants of the Indies attach so much importance to the use of Coca, this product can not be acclimatized in our hemisphere, and our fathers who took up the use of tobacco with so much eagerness remained indifferent to Coca. Perhaps this indifference should be attributed to the exaggerations of the first importers, who coming to Europe still imbued with the legends gathered in the New World ascribed supernatural qualities to the new plant. The exaggeration of these statements soon became apparent. From this it was only a step to a denial even of its existence. And thus, for more than two centuries, we were deprived of the advantages to be derived from the judicious use of the plant.

It should not be believed, however, that the various writers during these two centuries remained entirely silent regarding Coca. The study of the properties of the plant was still a field of research for a number of learned men, small, it is true, but they well knew that side by side with fiction, which they rejected, there was a reality that it were better to accept.

We further observe, that Claude Duret, a magistrate of Moulins, who wrote a book, printed in 1605, on The Marvellous and Wonderful Plants in Nature, mentions Coca as one of the most worthy to figure in his colleccion.

Nicholas Monardes in the General History of Plants, published in Lyons in 1653, calls attention likewise to the properties of Coca.

In the seventeenth century, l'abbé Longuerue, who was a theologian, an historian, and a philologist, speaking of the Spanish colonies in South America, says, in regard to the mines explored in Peru: "The negroes can not work in the mines, they all die. Hardly any but the natives are able to endure this labor, and then it is necessary to relieve them frequently and that they should chew Coca, without which the quicksilver vapors would kill them."

Linnæus says that Coca possesses: "the penetrating aroma of vegetable stimulants, the astricting and fortifying virtues of an astringent, the antispasmodic qualities of bitters, and the mucilaginous nutritive properties of analeptics or of alimentary plants. This leaf," he continues, "exhibits with energy its action on all parts of the animal economy: Olido in nervos, sapido in fibras utroque in fluido."

Father don Antonio Julian wrote: "This plant is a preventive against many diseases, a restorative of lost strength, and is capable of prolonging human life. It is sincerely to be regretted that so many poor families do not possess this preventive of hunger and thirst; that so many employees and laborers should be deprived of this means of maintaining their strength in the midst of continuous toil; that so many old and young men engaged in the arduous task of study and the accomplishment of their undertakings are unable to derive the beneficial results of this plant to guard against the exhaustion of the vital spirits, debility of the brain, and weakness of the stomach, which are frequent results of continuous study."