Humans have always wanted substances to relieve pain and to improve it well. Cocaine, used for centuries in the Andes, became the subject of study only in the nineteenth century, which inaugurated a long history of discoveries, experiments and finally worldwide addictions,
How we arrived here – Cocaine as a medicine
History is always a series of coincidences or will, of curious, adventurous or adjusted people and that of fentanyl It’s no different. Many people wrote to me to thank me and find out more. And so I thought it was useful to make a slow story. We are no coincidence.
Drug
Well, one can go back in time as long as he wants and he will always notice that the man is trying to find methods to feel “Better”, In the body and in the mind. In a sense, modern medicine follows this instinct, which eliminates pain and well stored.
Perhaps cocaine is the best known medicine from this point of view. Millennia in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and in general in the regions at the Andes, these magical leaves gave a general sense of relief, relieved pain, calm hunger and helped digestion. Nothing special for those who lived there, it was part of life.
It seems that the first to talk to American Europeans Amerigo VespucciBetween 1400 and 1500. Nothing.
And in fact no one has noticed us for years, until, towards the end of the 19th century, adventurers of different species and the precursors of the pharmaceutical companies of that time decided to look for medicines or ingredients for medicines in remote parts of the planet. It was thought that this thing that chewed in the Andes to be used to do medication, and that it could be used to calm the nerves and pain.
It seems that the name Coca comes from Mymaran, a language spoken in Bolivia and Peru, where the word Khoka Boom means.
It was difficult to bring these gate leaves to Europe, they often died during the long journeys by ship.
Finally, in 1860 in 1860 a German chemist of 26 years, Albert Niemannn succeeded, the active ingredient of the magical leaves, which he called cocaine. Many other chemists, physiologists and experimenters have worked on this substance to understand how it works at its best, how it worked, with experiments with animals and people.
Cocaine: What should you do with it?
A bit like the Mexican signs of today that use rabbits and chickens to find the best Fenanyl formulas.
Apart from the fact that the questions were not only on the dosage, but also what they had to do with it.
Do we use it as anesthetic?
Do we use it for the teeth?
We use it in the field ofophthalmology?
From a medical point of view, the first turning point came from one Oculista Vienna, Karl Koller Who published in an article that was published in 1884 showed that a cocaine application had closed the cornea of a patient, making them insensitive to pain, during an operation for the cataract.
This was important because the eyes are the subject of involuntary movements. They make reflexes very difficult to stabilize during surgical operations. Here, however, it was very easy to operate.
The news came very much in the US.
All to make cataract with cocaine.
After a few months it was thought that it would also use it as an agent for dental operations. After all, if he fell asleep the cornea, maybe It can also fall asleep the teeth?
At the end of 1884 a girot surgeon of the New York Good of the Time, William Halsted“ Read this cocaine and used it for Extraheer a tooth of judgment without pain. A great success.
William Halsted
The story of William Halsted It is completely single. He was a real scholar, curious and always looking for how he could improve his profession. That was it, and it is still considered one of the fathers of modern surgery.
It is thanks to him that aseptic procedures spread in the operating rooms – before there were blood and pus everywhere – the use of medical records, the use of gloves in the operating rooms. He was the first to successfully perform gallbladder operations, removal of hernias, blood transfusions, mastectomies.
Methods for less clear healing were invented. He preached that the patient must be treated with respect, that the surgeon must know a good anatomy and that surgery must be accurate and not random pieces of body pieces. Today there are concepts and edits in his name: “Halsted’s law”, “Halsted’s Operation”, “Halsted’s suture”, “Halsted’s Ligament”.
After reading the Koller cataract operation, Halsted thought that there can be other parts of the body where cocaine injects to cause patients to cause less pain and to do experiments with themselves and his students at Columbia University in New York. Some of them died of an overdose. Of course they didn’t know what they were doing.
Halsted himself became a kind of drug addict, mixing cocaine and morphine for the rest of his life and smashed his career in New York. He then moved to Baltimore, to John Hopkins University, where he kept practicing medicines to better hide his addictions. It was still a very good surgeon. He was addicted to cocaine for the rest of his life, that is, around 40 years.
Coca Koller
And so, after Koller, after Halsted, after the eyes and teeth, he moved to cocaine as an anesthetic for the rest of the body, to block the nerves and especially to numb the spine.
The price was not an obstacle from nothing. At the time, a Golden Ounce cost $ 16; An ounce of cocaine $ 224. Fourteen times a lot.
In any case, he worked beautifully and the press elevated as much as I can’t do this.
Karl Koller was nicknamed Coca Koller.
At the end of the 1980s, the big launch for the masses: cocaine, summarized by the Coca, was sold as “tonic” General.
It was an additive in the eyes for the eyes, in the cough syrups, for asthma, to shatter hair, to calm the children, to make their teeth resistant to caries, for the influence, for seasonal allergies, for the resistance in bicycles, for the painted skin and for the clearest hair. Also to Colored tattoos in the eyes.
It was advisable to use it for the singers and speakers in public.
In short, a remedy everything. And everyone wanted it.
Apart from the costs, it was a fully unregulated substance. Everyone could enter a pharmacy of that time and buy it as desired.
The advertisement of that time is very interesting. The images below, found on the net, also smile you. They are all of the period 1885-1915.
Cocaine as a long -term elixir!
