Cocaine was forgotten in Europe for hundreds of years
The Spaniards refused to disclose any information and knowledge about South America in order to monopolize its benefits. A special institution was eve established in 1503 to censor all goods, personnel, and written records related to South America. As a result, coca remained unknown to the rest of Europe for a long time. Nevertheless, anecdotes and weird creatures from South America were secretly recorded by some explorers and circulated within a small circle of scientists, merchants and officials. Spanish physician Nicholas Monardes never visited the South American continent, but his high status in the medical community enabled him to trade with colonies across the Atlantic. Plants in New World and their medicinal values were described in his books, including tobacco, coca and related customs and cultures. John Frampton published the first English translation in 1577.
The coca tree could not tolerate cold, snowy winters of Europe and dry summers of Mediterranean, so it failed to cultivate in Europe during the 17th to 19th centuries. Coca and its legends were gradually forgotten by the public. Only a few people learned about coca through rumors, books and specimens in museum. During this period, only French and British naturalists collected a few of coca samples from South America.
German naturalist Johan von Tschudi visited Peru several times. An anecdote about coca he shared was reprinted in dozens of European newspapers and medical journals: A laborer hardly ate food and slept only about two hours a day during five days of work, but he chewed some coca leaves every few hours; he seemed to be a perpetual motion machine with endless energy. People also discovered other similar stimulating plants and realized that these weird South American plants were not magical, but contained psychoactive ingredients that could control people's minds. This sparked Europeans' curiosity. What exactly was inside coca?
Scientists struggled to extract cocaine from coca leaves.
It was difficult because coca only grew well in European greenhouses, and leaves deteriorated during the transoceanic journey. There was a little or even no cocaine in these stale and short supply coca leaves for experiments.
In 1856, Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I dispatched the Novara frigate to circumnavigate the globe to show his strong empire. After the voyage, Dr. Carl Scherzer brought back a large box full of coca leaves at the request of German chemist Friedrich Wöhler who was the first person to synthesize urea from inorganic substances. Wöhler's student Albert Niemann successfully isolated the potent ingredient in 1859 and named it cocaine. The nitrogen atom in cocaine absorbs protons to make it a charged hydrophilic salt in acidic environment, while alkali neutralizes protons to make it a hydrophobic oily free base. Therefore, the isolation and purification principle is to convert cocaine between hydrophobic and hydrophilic states by changing pH repeatedly. Niemann tasted the cocaine crystals he extracted and found that his tongue numbed.
However, people at that time had no idea what pure cocaine was used for, and it had almost no market, so coca leaves were piled up for a long time before being shipped to Europe, resulting in a severe drop in cocaine content. Researchers found it difficult to buy cocaine, and its poor quality made it impossible to repeat each other's discoveries to explore new uses. Thus, this formed a terrible closed loop. Cocaine was almost ignored for more than 20 years. The most famous product of this period was wine-soaked coca leaves that enhanced vitality and soothed mood.
Cocaine: Local Painkiller or Analgesic for Minor Surgery
In 1884, Freud, who had just graduated from medical school, should have heard the miraculous story of coca and cocaine. He spent 10% of his monthly salary to order one gram cocaine from the local pharmacy. He tasted it and found that it indeed resisted hunger and felt euphoric and excited as rumored. Freud shared it with his colleagues and friends enthusiastically, including eye doctor Karl Koller who also tasted cocaine and numbed his tongue. When a colleague said that everyone who tried it had the same feeling, he suddenly realized that this was the ideal local anesthetic people had been looking for. He hurried back to the hospital to verify his idea through experiments. When cocaine solution was dropped into eyes, the pain was almost completely disappeared so that he could touch the cornea with a tool, whether the subject was a rabbit, dog or himself. The other eye would resist even the slightest touch occurred.
A medical revolution was quickly triggered when the entire medical community learned Kohler's conclusions. Although doctors could perform painless surgery with ether or chloroform, the patients always lost consciousness, and a few would never wake up. Many patients woke up feeling severe dizziness and nausea. They were only suitable for major surgeries rather than minor ones. Since there was no local anesthetic, it was more like torture than surgery. Each cut was accompanied by a wave of intense pain. Patient struggled in vain, because their hands and feet were tightly bound to bed, and their mouth was gagged by cloth. Several assistants held him down to prevent him from breaking free. It was not easy for the doctor either.
Now, patients could not only receive treatment calmly but also participate in evaluating nerve damage, such as blinking and moving their eyeballs. Koller was just a doctor responsible for eye surgeries, and the broader application had to be completed by other doctors. William Halsted and his team injected cocaine near the nerves to block pain and achieve surgeries that had never been attempted before, such as removing the entire breast or local tumors. He also injected cocaine near lumbar spine to suppress pain in the lower body, and patient remained conscious at the same time.