JRSM >
Volume 96, Number 11 >
Pp. 568-569
London NW11, UK
S Karch
224 pp Price £29.95; US$39.95 ISBN 1-85315-547-0
(h/b)
London: RSM Press, 2003
Strange history, intriguing curiosities, unhappy lessons for would-be controllers of the cocaine trade and satisfaction for the armchair traveller await the reader of this handsomely produced paperback. Over the years, Professor Karch has written much about cocaine, its actions and its licit and illegal usage, and this new book extends his previous writings on the ways in which cocaine has been used and abused by various European governments for their own purposes. It presents six accounts of the earliest botanical studies, planting and trade in cocaine which illustrate the ability of the species to thrive in Java (now part of Indonesia) as well as in South America, how 19th century pharmacognostic confusion muddled the start of legal international trade in the plant and its alkaloid, and the early appreciation of the source and potential medicinal value of cocaine. It is even possible to discern an early approach to ‘crack cocaine’ in comments on the use of alkaline cocaine mixtures.
The kernel of the book consists of skilful translations of rare monographs
by Josef Nevinn
(Das Cocablatt, Vienna 1886), Emma Reens
(La Coca de Java, Lons-Le Saunier, 1919) and Theodor Waigler (Die
Coca, Berlin, 1917). To clarify the history of the Dutch attempt to
establish coca growing in Java, we also have the monograph of M Morris from
the Bulletin of the Royal Gardens, Kew, 1889, an article ‘Coca
from Java’ by G van den Sleen from the Indonesian Mercury of 25
February 1908, and H H Rusby's ‘The botanical origin of coca
leaves’ from the Druggists Circular and Chemical Gazette,
November 1900. It is possible to discern an intriguing battle of the botanists
here, as in the development of the quinine and natural rubber trades.
Together they show how early botanists were confused about which species was the best source of cocaine, the role of British, Dutch and other explorers and agronomists in establishing the plant as an economically valuable crop in various colonies and the patchy knowledge gained from hard experiences of how to cultivate it and how to extract the alkaloid. The international trade in coca leaf early in the last century is noted, including the activities of monopolist pharmaceutical firms in America and Europe, who saw a market and ignored the problem of addiction, as did most physicians and politicians of the time.
This is a good ‘read’, since it can be enjoyed for the charm of the history and the illustrative engravings, the access to very rare references and, for the more cynical, yet another retrospective example that governments often do not fully understand what they are doing when promoting trade. The themes in the work are mostly clear, although I would have liked more on how the work of Freud, Koller and others led to recognition and introduction of cocaine as a medicine for several purposes. It was the unguarded introduction of cocaine and its therapeutic popularity in the West, plus realization that coca leaves gave considerable resilience to labourers elsewhere, that encouraged many to tolerate the widening use of cocaine, and later the ‘crack’ so troublesome today.
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