Coca - the most forbidden leaf in the world
Today, when people hear the word “coca”, they think of cocaine. That is no coincidence. It is the result of 160 years of history.
In 1860, the German chemist Albert Niemann isolated the alkaloid cocaine from the leaves of the Andean plant [Erythroxylum coca] for the first time. He described its numbing effect on the tongue, a chemical breakthrough that electrified Europe. Shortly after, pharmaceutical production began. The Darmstadt-based company Merck became one of the first industrial manufacturers of cocaine.
In the decades that followed, the substance was used as a local anesthetic, prescribed by doctors, published on by Sigmund Freud, and marketed by European pharmaceutical companies.
The sacred plant of the Indigenous peoples of South America had suddenly become a highly sought-after raw material. Coca was transformed from a cultural bearer into a chemical source. The sacred leaf disappeared behind the alkaloid.
