The medical interest which has centred in Cocaine as a local anæsthetic during the last few years, has gradually become diffused as “public opinion,” the more so, of late, as it has been recommended as a remedy for sea-sickness, from which Britons all more or less suffer on leaving our seagirt home; otherwise, internally, Cocaine has been but little used compared with its probably extended use in the future, when its effects are better known. This now important alkaloid is obtained from the leaves of Erythroxylon Coca, Lamarck, a shrub cultivated on the eastern slopes and plateaux of the Andes, chiefly in Bolivia and Peru, but also in the Argentine Republic, Ecuador, United States of Colombia, and Central America, as far north as San Salvador, and latterly in Java, Ceylon, and some parts of British India.
COCA AND COCAINE.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY.
The earliest accounts extant of Coca are contained in the writings of the historians who treat of the Spanish conquests in South America in the sixteenth century, and of Spanish travellers and Jesuit missionaries who followed in their wake.
Pedro de Cieza de Leon thus writes,[2] (A.D. 1532 to 1550):—
“I have observed in all parts of the West Indies, where I have been, that the natives delight in holding herbs, roots, or twigs of trees in their mouths. Thus, in the territory of Antiocha, they use a small Herb called Coca, and other sorts in the province of Arma. In those of Quimbaya and Anzerma, they cut twigs off a sort of tender middling trees, which are always green, wherewith they are incessantly rubbing their teeth. In most parts about Cali and Popayan, they hold in their mouths the aforesaid small Coca, with a composition they keep in little calabashes, or else a sort of earth, like lime. Throughout all Peru, from the time they rise in the morning till they go to bed at night, they are never without this Coca in their mouths. The reason some Indians, to whom I put the question, gave me for so doing, was, that it made them insensible of hunger, and added to their strength and vigour. Something there may be in it, yet I am rather of opinion it is only an ill habit, and fit for such people as they are.
“This Coca is planted on the Mountains Andes, from Guamanga, to the town of La Plata, where it grows up to little trees, which they cherish and nurse up carefully, that they may bear those leaves, resembling our Myrtle. They dry them in the sun, and then lay them in long narrow baskets, each of them holding about a quarter of a hundredweight. So highly was this Coca valued in Peru, in the years 1548, ’49, ’50, and ’51, that I believe no plant in the world, except Spice, could equal it; for at that time most of the plantations about Cuzco, La Paz, and La Plata yielded some 80, some 60, some 40,000 pieces-of-eight a year, more or less, and all in Coca; and whoever had lands assigned him first reckoned how many baskets of Coca they yielded. In fine, it was more esteemed than the best wheat. They carried it to sell at the mines of Potosi; and so many fell to planting, that it is now much fallen in the price, but will always be valued. Several Spaniards got estates by buying and selling of Coca, or bartering for it in the Indian markets.”
Nicholas Monardes,[3] a Spanish physician of the sixteenth century, also quotes Pedro de Cieza de Leon more fully from his Commentaries “on Peruvian Things” under the heading of Betre (Betel), “History of Aromatics,” book i., with annotations:—
“This plant Coca has been celebrated for many years among the Indians, and they sow and cultivate it with much care and industry, because they all apply it daily to their use and pleasure.
“It is indeed of the height of two outstretched arms; its leaves somewhat like those of Myrtle, but larger and more succulent, and green (and they have, as it were, drawn in the middle of them another leaf of similar shape); its fruit collected together in a cluster, which like Myrtle fruit becomes red when ripening, and of the same size, and when quite ripe it is black in colour. When the time of the harvest of the leaves arrives, they are collected in baskets with other things to make them dry, that they may be better preserved, and may be carried to other places. For from their native mountains they are carried to other mountainous parts for the sake of trade, and are exchanged for other goods, such as clothes and flocks, salt and other articles, which stand to these people in the position of money. The seed is enclosed in mastiche, and removed from thence is sown elsewhere in well-cultivated earth in drills or rows, just as we sow the pea or the bean.