In the nineteenth century, cocaine was celebrated as a miraculous ally of medicine and well -being. Between enthusiasm and entrepreneurship, figures such as Paolo Mantegazza and Angelo Mariani promoted their use, unaware of its danger. This article tells their fascinating and controversial story
The coca, magical ingredient
The discovery of the magical ingredient of the coca leaves, cocaine, found great application in nascent modern medicine as a pain reliever and anesthetizing. In parallel, a whole recreational industry appeared based on the use of this substance. We are still around 1860 and in full euphoria by leaves of “Coca del Peru”.
It is difficult today to understand the enthusiasm of the time for this substance that really seemed to be miraculous since, for a while at least, the danger was not understood.
Paolo Mantegazza
In a sense, everything starts from Italy. One of the greatest admirers of the coca of this era was fucked Paolo Mantegazza. He was a neurologist, anthropologist, politician, science fiction writer and director of the anthropology museum in Florence.
This is a very interesting character, above all given the historical context, with ideas on crime, on the theories of evolution, on how to carry on artificial fertilization. He was a proposer of the seed bank for soldiers. He also wrote the “Hygeiene Juizels,” understood for the masses, which led to the use of better health rules throughout Italy.
Mantegazza wrote things entitled: Physiology of pain, physiology of love, the loves of men, physiology of hatred, women’s physiology. He also wrote a following in the book “Heart” of Edmondo de Amicis of which he was a friend.
Interesting, no?
Mantegazza was from Monza but had been in Norway and India and, above all, in Argentina and Paraguay.
Here he had done his doctor and observed how indigenous tribes lived, and hence his interest in anthropology. He had also observed the effects, very positive according to him, of the “Magic plant of the INSTS” on the local population.
On his return to Italy from South America he began to chew Coca too, and in 1859 he wrote an article entitled “On coca’s hygienic and medicinal virtues and nerve foods in general”.
Of the coca wrote
“I looked at the poor mortals condemned to live in this valley of tears while I, transported on the wings of two coca leaves, I flown through the spaces of 77,438 words, each more splendid than the previous one. An hour later, I was sufficiently calm to write these words with a firm hand: God is unfair because he made the man unable to support the effect of the coca for a lifetime. of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 centuries without coca “.
Mantegazza was a strong supporter of the use of coca for the rest of life to enhance and calm the human mind. In 1871 he published a manual on all drugs known at the time, their properties on the human psyche, and their usefulness. It was called “Paintings of human nature. Holidays and intoxications” And he is considered his masterpiece.
In 1897 he wrote “The year 3000: dream”, A sort of science fiction novel where he imagined that we would have air conditioning, credit cards, energy from the sun, cards, virtual reality and lasting peace in Europe in the year 3000. Not bad, since all these things arrived before 2000!
Paolo Mantegazza is much more than cocaine. For lack of time and space, I cannot talk about it further here but, for those interested, an internet research reveals all humanity and nobility of mind.
Angelo Mariani
The first to market Coca wine was Angelo Mariani, a professor of Italian chemistry from Corsica. That it has an Italian name is no coincidence, given that Mariani read various documents written by Paolo Mantegazza on the Coca leaves and thought it well to make us a business.
The first experiment was on a depressed actress, who miraculously found energy and vigor. And so Mariani began to sell his “Tonic wine Mariani (at La Coca du Peru)” Already in 1863 in Paris. It was a subscription that then came to the rest of Europe and the USA, so much so that in 1880 Mariani opened a brand new industrial plant made especially for Vin Mariani, in Neuilly-Surgine, near Paris.
This coca-wine was made by mixing the Bordeaux wine with coca leaves that came from Peru, later also from Bolivia. The concoction remained in mixing for ten hours, with 60 coca leaves per liter of wine.
The ethanol in the wine worked as a solvent and managed to extract cocaine from the leaves during the preparation, creating a molecule that is now called cocaethylene. The result is that Vin Mariani had a variable alcoholic rate between 11 and 17% with about 200 or 250 milligrams of cocaine per liter. People really like this coca wine because cocaethylene is more euphoric (and toxic) than cocaine and alcohol taken alone. I just didn’t know.
Vin Mariani was sold both as an aperitif and as a digestive to give strength, vigor, energy, vitality, appetite. It was for athletes and artists and it was a “Invigorator of the sexual organs”.
In July 1884, Sigmund Freud published a series of documents entitled “Uber Coca”to express his admiration both for the coca and for Vin Mariani.
All to drink the Vin Mariani
With the extracts of the coca, Mariani also created other products (all “Tonics”) revealing a modern entrepreneur who not only sniffed business but who knew how to market him with spot on marketing. And not for nothing, Angelo Mariani is considered one of the fathers of modern advertising.
What unprecedented at the time, it was to seek celebrities who could say good things about its products. He managed to capture all the VIPs of the time.
I receive “testimonial” history
Jules Verne and Emile Zola drank Vin Mariani. So also Queen Vittoria. The actress Sarah Bernhardt said she couldn’t play for a long time without the Vin Mariani. Rudyard Kipling said he was angelic. Pope Pius X and Pope Leo XIII used it. The latter led him alongside every day to fortify himself “When prayer is not enough”. Pope Leo XIII gave a gold medal to Angelo Mariani, who immediately ended up in advertising.
Other coca wine consumers were the inventor Thomas Edison, the French Prime Minister Jules Medine, the musicians Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni, the writers Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Hg Wells, Alexander Dumas, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Robert Louis Stephenson scrisse “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” During six days of intense writing under the effects of the Marian Vin. Other consumers were the King Alfonso of Spain, the Shah of Persia and also two American presidents, William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant.
The explorer Ernest Shackleton brought Vin Mariani to Antarctica and Augusta Bartholdi said that if he had consumed Vin Mariani probably his statue of freedom would have been higher than several hundred meters.
Colored advertisements
From France the colorful complaints of Angelo Mariani arrived in the rest of Europe with the signatures of the most popular illustrators of the time and with the words of Puccini, Edison, Mascagni and Zola and the Pope, the former “testimonial” of history.
Even a medical magazine of the time, Medical Newsguaranteed that no other commercial compound had like this “Full support” of the medical community.
The success of Vin Mariani brought down a series of other drinks from the wine and coca formula all over the world
In France and Spain but also in New York and London. Among the most famous Sedna (Andes written at the meeting!), The Meatcalf’s Coca Wine of Boston, the Maltine of New York, the Coca Wine of the Armbrecht in London, Halls Coca Wine in London, the Vin Bravais of Paris and the Rochelle in Paris.
In England they were called nerve wines
Some of these formulas boasted high content of cocaine and were also advertised in medical magazines. Others, on the other hand, had other additional ingredients, meat, or other Brazilian walnuts.
Among these, the Coca Cola, of which we will speak the next episode.
At one point, we realized the dangers of cocaine, cocaethylene and all the coca-castello fell away. Vin Mariani became illegal. Angelo Mariani tried to oppose but he couldn’t. Vin Mariani disappeared from circulation in 1914.
Coca button
And finally, there was also a Bologna company that produced Coca Wine. It was directed by a certain Jean Bouton who had a liqueur factory in Gentilly, France, which originally supplied Napoleon III.
After the fall of the emperor, the Mr. Bouton factory went in ruins and he came to Bologna, Italianized his name, created the distillery Giovanni Boton and began to sell Coca Boton, in Italy, starting from 1870. It was called Elixir Coca Buliviana.
Like the other blends it was a cure -all and everything was guaranteed by the words of Paolo Mantegazza, according to which Coca Boton was the glory of Italian liqueurs.
Incredibly Coca Boton can still be bought now. They produce it in San Lazzaro di Savena, province of Bologna and the company has recently been purchased by Amaro Montenegro. It is a green liqueur.
The recipe has not been different since then, the leaves still come from Bolivia and Peru and are now put in the safe. Once they extract the aroma to make the wine there, the used leaves are given to the Guardia di Finanza that counts them one by one.
In 2017 a pseudo-discendent of Angelo Mariani, Cristophe Mariani, began to reproduce the Vin Mariani adapting it to today’s laws. Nobody knows the original recipe and so they use the best possible approximation, without cocaine. AGWA DE BOLIVIA, Dutch drink with the Bolivian Coca leaves and Amuerte, one Gin and Coca that is produced in Belgium is also there.
I have never touched any kind of drugs in my life (not even cigarettes), but I must say that Vin Mariani and Coca Boton intrigues me a lot!
However, the advertisements are beautiful.
Il Coca-Wine
“The magic drink that sends the blood pulsing through the veins, gives you new life, and makes it worth living”. (The magic drink that makes the blood pulsate in the veins, gives you new life and makes it worthy of being lived)
“A valuable Stimulating Tonic in cases of debility and for persons recovering from illness, especially in the sleeplessness arising from nervous exhaustion”. (A precious stimulating tonic in cases of weakness and for people in the recovery phase from a disease, in particular in insomnia deriving from nervous exhaustion)
An interesting story is that of the Hall’s Coca Wine, introduced to London in 1888 and made with the port. The owner of the product was called Henry James Hall and realized that calling it Coca Wine he was advertising the coca in general. Not being able to record the name “Coca Wine” Like Trademark, he decided to call this Hall’s Wine wine, removing the word coca, not to conceal the content to cocaine but to strengthen the Hall’s brand!
This Hall’s Wine was approved by the doctors of Lancet and of the British Medical Journal for human consumption. Some doctor had reservations, but not on cocaine in wine, but on the alcoholic content and on the risk of alcohol about women.
Even if it lasted little, they just couldn’t understand that the coca could be dangerous.
Other times, huh?
Laws: La Coca, before Fenanyl (part before)
