Coca to Combat Opiate, Alcohol and Tobacco Addiction

From my unpublished manuscript "Coca- Forgotten Medicine"

Coca was regarded favorably in treating drug addictions involving physical withdrawal and debility (i.e. malnutrition and bodily metabolism), a stance advocated on both sides of the Atlantic.

W.H. Bentley, a Medical Doctor practicing in Oak Valley, Kentucky, authored the September 15, 1880 Therapeutic Gazette article "Erythroxloyn Coca and the Opium and Alcohol Habits" - an account of about half a dozen patients who relieved of their habit by drinking Coca preparations.

Bentley was not alone in his findings, in the U.S. nor abroad, with numerous reports of this efficacy appearing regularly in The Therapeutic Gazette as well as the Philadelphia Medical Times, New Remedies, Medical and Surgical Reporter, and New York Medical Record, and elsewhere.

Remember this was with Coca preparations, containing a low concentrations of cocaine alkaloid, akin to that customary for the alkaloid caffeine in Coffee and Tea, or the alkaloid nicotine in Tobacco. This was not the 100 X more potent use of isolated cocaine in the highly concentrated direct doses made possible with injections.

Mirroring this positive view of this efficacy of Coca in France, French Army Surgeon-in-Chief, Dr. Liberman wrote about the1884 observations of Dr. Villeneuve about the use of pate and in treating, amongst other things, "morphinomania":

"M. X....., barrister, 32 years of age, five years ago began to use morphine preparations as a remedy against a very alarming chronic bronchitis and granulation in the throat which were irritated constantly by cigarette smoking." "the patient at first only used morphine, but his physician committed the imprudence of treating him by hypodermic injection. A noticeable change for the better was produced during the first month, but unfortunately, abuse succeeded promptly the use of the medicament-- so much that when I commenced to treat the patient, he was taking daily from 1 gramme 50 centigrams to 1 gramme 80 centigrammes of morphine hypodermically. When he was four hours without his dose there appeared insomnia, hallucinations and delirium; constipation lasting sometimes for fifteen days, which brought on in the spring a very alarming perityplitis, jerking of the muscles, sudden frights, dyspepsia, and at last frightful congestion of the face whenever he drank a drop of wine or brandy.

"After a month's treatment I had succeeded in reducing the daily doses without causing alarming symptoms; the physiological functions seemed to awaken again. however, the congestion and especially the dyspepsia was very grave, and the cough which had been suppressed by morphine returned. It was then that I treated my patient with phosphate of lime, the pate and the . Lacking his habitual stimulant, he was plunged in a semi-coma from which he could not always be relieved with weaker daily doses of morphine. . . The danger I feared most was a relapse of bronchitis, and that the cough and expectoration might end fatally. But in about a week, during which he took ten doses of Pate de Coca daily, the cough became less fatiguing and disappeared entirely in about twenty days. The patient than commenced to take small doses of (two Mandeira-glasses a day). At first congestion appeared, but little by little, as digestion became more easy, my patient, who on account of his profound anemia could not tolerate any table wines, took at first a small glass, than two, than three glasses at a meal. Now he can go and take dinner in town, which he had not been able to do for three years; he regained his former vigor, is able to undertake anew his occupations, and has entirely given up his morphine habit."

In Paris, Mesureur, the French Ex-Minister of Commerce, and the current (in 1910) Director of Hygiene and Public Health, who approved and signed the French government's radical poster campaign against alcoholism, would state that:

“The dangers of alcoholism would be avoided if no other stimulant were taken for mental or physical trials than that offered by the generous."

The over lap in the popular use of opiates and alcohol, and that of opiates, alcohol and tobacco, brought about situations where coca’s use in combating the use of the first two led to the discovery of its efficacy in combating use of the third, with these being regarded favorably according to the account by Dr. Liberman and Villeneuve

“I have also employed it in cases, happily rare in our army, of chronic alcoholism resulting from the abuse of brandy, absinthe or strong liquors. The produced all the excitement sought by drinkers, but had at the same time a sedative influence on their nervous systems. I have frequently seen hardened drinkers renounce their fatal habit and return to a healthy condition." "I have also used to save smokers of exaggerated habits, from nicotinism. A few glasses of taken in small doses, either pure or mixed with water, acted as a substitute for pipes and cigars, because the smokers found in it the cerebral excitement which they sought in tobacco, wholly preserving their intellectual faculties."

The concept of Coca as a Tobacco substitute received a fair bit of attention in Europe and the U.S., where Coca leaf was introduced in comparable smokable forms: cigarettes, cheroots and cigarettes of Coca. Made in a variety of manners, sometimes mixed with Tobacco (usually involving Coca leaf innards wrapped in a Tobacco outer shell), these smokable forms of Coca -- including a pure Coca leaf pipe blend -- were reportedly found useful medicinally. According to an article by a Dr. F.E. Stewart appearing in the September 19, 1885 Philadelphia Medical Times, smoking Coca leaf had numerous medically useful applications with a basis in its established therapeutic applications, so noted:

"Coca has been used with great success in the treatment of the opium habit, it is also an excellent substitute for Tobacco [emphasis added]. It has been successfully used in dyspepsia, flatulency, colic, gastralgia, enteralgia, hysteria, hypochondria, spinal irritation, idiopathic convulsions , nervous erethism, and in the debility following severe acute affections. As it is a valuable restorative agent, checking tissue-waste, it is also a useful remedy in consumption [?] and wasting diseases generally. It is also of value in the nervous forms of sick-headache, migraine. It is also said to be an aphrodisiac."

Reporting on several cases of experiences with smoking Coca, Stewart found that most found them useful, with a high percentage finding Coca cigars as useful for stemming depression -- the "blues" -- and as a mild stimulant. Citing one example of a leading Wilmington, Delaware physician:

"After dinner, he smoked a couple of the cigars, with the effect that the blues were expelled and he felt the exhilarating effect of the drug in the same manner as after a dose of the wine. It is his opinion that the effect of the cigars is milder than that of the wine, but he is satisfied that he experienced the peculiar power of the coca by smoking it."

Citing others, a man suffering dyspepsia -- a digestive disorder -- and its attendant depression:

"smoked the cigars...the result being to dispel the depressed feeling and remove the fullness experienced after each meal. Repeated experiments confirm this. As coca is said to stimulate the gastric nerves and greatly facilitate digestion, the above experiment seems to prove that the cigar has a similar effect."

These experiments included Dr. Stewart's own use. Writing upon his personal discovery of Coca leaf smoking as a treatment for hay fever:

Personally, I have found the effect of smoking coca leaves to bear out the statement that the drug produces a general excitation of the circulatory and nervous systems. Smoking and inhaling the smoke of one or two cigars will increase my own pulse rate some eight or ten beats to the minute. It certainly relieves the scene of fatigue. Smoked at night, in my own case and in the cases of several of my patients, it produces wakefulness similar to strong coffee. The exaltation produced by it does not seem to be followed by any feeling of languor or depression. I find it a relief after a full meal, like a good tobacco cigar. It seems to impart increased vigor to the muscular system as well to the intellect, with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. I have never experienced any intoxicating effects from smoking it. Dr. Bartholow says that coca, as in the case with tea and coffee, acts as an indirect nutrient by checking waste, and hence a less amount of food is necessary to maintain the bodily functions; and as I have just learned, in a letter from Messrs. Parke, Davis and Company, that "a Mr. Stevens, a citizen of Abilene, Kansas, who was afflicted with hay fever, and was about to go to the mountains, has concluded to remain at home, having obtained relief from the use of cigarettes of coca. Every morning he uses a cigarette and perfect relief. He uses three per day.

Information on Coca leaf smokables, their history and decline is rare- for records showing sales or later accounts are generally inaccessible. As these even included a pipe mixture, described in its day with the misnomer as a "smoking Tobacco", Coca leaf smoking presented some interesting parallels, for one the possibility they were a more benign substitute to smoke then Tobacco. Among “chewers” of these respective agricultural commodities, oral cancer is common with those using Tobacco, yet its rare among chewers of Coca. Given that these Coca leaf smokables were introduced only 30 years before Coca was banned by U.S. statute by the 1914 Harrison Act, they have less of a history to be fully aware of their long term chronic effects. Nor does it appear that this has been a topic of any study- baring any possible secret research, much like the cigarette companies' purported non-study of the pharmacological properties of nicotine.