The analysis to which the coca leaves I brought home with me were subjected at Göttingen, was attended by most important results, though the experiments are far from being completed. It was reserved for one of the assistants of the chemical laboratory, named Albert Niemann, to discover
in the leaves a peculiar crystallized organic base, to which, following the usual custom in such cases, the name Cocain has been given.[146]
The lamented death of Dr. Albert Niemann in the flower of his youth, and in the midst of his promising labours, necessarily interrupted for a time the investigations into the nature and properties of cocain. M. Wöhler, however, in his capacity of Director of the Chemical Laboratory of the University, was so good as to assign to another able assistant, Mr. W. Lossen, the task of taking up the analysis at the point where its gifted discoverer had left it, when it was found that, when heated in chlorine, the cocain underwent a singular and
astonishing metamorphosis, being in fact resolved into Benzoic acid and a new organic base, for which M. Wöhler proposes the name of Ecgonin (from Εχγονος, an off-shoot). Further researches with the coca leaves lead to the discovery of a second organic base, which, it would appear, is contained in its primitive form in the coca, the composition of which will be treated of in a forthcoming paper by Mr. Lossen. This base is in a liquid form, for which the provisional name hygrin (from υγρος, fluid) has been adopted.[147]
Hitherto the experiments made to determine the physiological properties of cocain have been less important in their results, as it is only found in small quantities in the coca leaf, and an adequate quantity can only be obtained with great trouble and difficulty.[148] Consequently it is as yet impossible to decide the questions, whether one of these bases is stronger than the other, as also to which of the two are to be ascribed
the peculiar properties of the plant. Singular enough, the various experiments with an effusion of the coca leaves had not the least result, while it is well known that the use of this kind of tea in the Cordilleras wonderfully stimulates the breathing powers of the traveller, besides satisfying his appetite.[149] It would also appear that the coca leaves lose part of their virtue in transit, and that their most intense activity is only developed in their native regions. If, however, the ultimate results of the experiments of Mr. Lossen, instituted with as much sagacity as zeal, should incontestably prove the value and utility of the plant for pharmaceutical purposes, as well as in all cases where the human strength is exposed to unwonted strains upon its energies, the means will surely and easily be found for extracting on the spot the active principles of coca, as is being at present done by industrious Yankees in Ecuador, with the Cinchona or China bark.
When the Novara was leaving Batavia, I cherished the hope that our stay in South America would be sufficiently prolonged to admit of my making an excursion to the Cinchona forests, so as to enable me to speak authoritatively and from personal knowledge upon certain questions discussed at Lembang with Dr. Junghuhn,[150] which had hitherto been left
unsettled or altogether unexamined, and which were of such deep import to the attempts being made in Java to cultivate
the Cinchona. Circumstances, however, had conspired to render this impracticable. Instead of the entire expedition, as originally projected, visiting that classic region, it was reserved
to myself, a solitary individual, to tread the scenes, where Humboldt once collected the first valuable contributions to science, and even then my time was so limited that my attention had to be confined to the capital of Peru, and the neighbouring country. Under these circumstances such a project as a regular scientific excursion deep into the heart of the Cinchona forests was entirely out of the question. I did not fail, however, to translate into Spanish and English, the disputed points which Dr. Junghuhn had requested me to ascertain for him, so that I might obtain such information upon these interesting questions from such of the friends I made in Peru or Chile as seemed likely, either in their own persons or by the opportunities for natural studies that might happen to characterize their place of residence, to