Toxicology on the archeological remains of humans found in a 19th-century crypt could shed new light into the history of consumption of cocaine in Europe, according to a new study published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. The biological samples came from a pioneering hospital in the 16th and 17th centuries that treated poor laborers and other impoverished residents of Milan, Italy. Next to the hospital’s grounds was a crypt containing 14 underground chambers where 10,000 people who died in the hospital were buried. These human remains were excavated and analyzed, revealing that the preserved bones and brain tissues contained traces of cocaine, an alkaloid found in coca leaves.
These laboratory tests allowed researchers to backdate the arrival of the coca plant by almost two centuries in Europe to the 1600s. The coca plant is a bush that grows natively in western South America and has been cultivated there for thousands of years for religious and cultural purposes. Coca was not discovered by Europeans until Spanish colonizers arrived in the Americas in the 15th century; when Amerigo Vespucci arrived in Venezuela in 1499, he noticed that the locals had a practice of chewing the leaves of the stimulating plant with lime and roasted shells. However, the Spanish did not export coca plants to Europe, where there was no knowledge or demand for it. Instead, they preferred to trade silver, gold, tobacco, and sugar, which were far more lucrative. While some colonizers did try to bring coca leaves back to the Old World, the plants would deteriorate too much during the journey, and their effects were not widely recognized by those back home.
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Thus, many historians believed that the consumption of coca plants did not reach Europe until the 19th century, when it was synthesized as cocaine hydrochloride salts. The researchers in the new study, however, suggest that a significant population of Milanese citizens came into contact with the plant and chewed its leaves much earlier than previously thought. Interestingly, coca was not included in the hospital’s official pharmacopeia, suggesting that it was used recreationally, or was prescribed by healers working outside of the hospital.
“This study allows for a better understanding of how the use of cocaine has changed over the centuries in Europe,” the authors wrote in their report. They noted that coca started as a recreational or non-traditional medicinal substance, then evolved into a more widely-used medicine in the form of cocaine hydrochloride salts in the 19th century, before becoming a widespread substance of abuse and the cause of ⅕ of overdose deaths across the world in the 20th century. “Whether coca leaves were used for recreational purposes, or rather for their reinforcing properties helpful for the population in their hard everyday life, is a topic that requires further debate,” they concluded.
