Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variationsin hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all otherspelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
3. FLOWER (enlarged.) 4. FRUIT.
COCA AND COCAINE:
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.
[Pg iii]
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
I have been induced to compile this brochure, as supplementaryto the short description of Coca given in the“Extra Pharmacopœia,” on account of the attention thisplant, and its alkaloid Cocaine, have excited during thepast eighteen months.
Although made known to us soon after the conquestof Peru by Pizarro—more than three centuries ago—theaccounts travellers have given of Coca have onlyreceived about the same credence, and been treatedwith 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. Itwas thought the use of the leaves by the Indians of Peruwas only that of a masticatory, which simply increasedthe flow of saliva. We looked upon its so-called nutritiveproperties, or rather its hunger and thirst-appeasingeffects, as well as its power to ward off fatigue andrelieve oppressive respiration during mountain ascents,as superstitions unworthy of more attention than thebetel-nut mastication practised in India. The surgicaluses of Cocaine as a local anæsthetic have, however, tosome extent dispelled these illusions, and we have beenmore ready to receive the accounts of early as well asrecent travellers, thinking “there may be something inthem.” I have endeavoured to reproduce what manyhave written, as much as possible in their own words, ortranslations of them.
The old habit of Coca chewing has clung to thePeruvian Indians after their “power, civilisation,language, alphabets, writings, and even old religionshave disappeared,” says Johnston,[1] “the common-lifecustoms and the bodily features of the people havealone 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), andSweet Gale (Myrica Gale), formerly used to give bitt