The pioneers of cocaine in the footsteps of a product with an almost mystical aura

The cargo ordered by the D^r Wöhler arrived in the hold, almost quietly. In the port of Trieste, this morning of August 26, 1859, no one pays attention to this bundle of stunted leaves, barely 10 kilos, extracted from the hold of the three-master Novara, among the 26,000 exotic specimens brought back from a fabulous 551-day circumnavigation of the globe. The Empire of Austria is celebrating the return of this scientific expedition, the riches of which will soon join the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, under construction in the capital. But, for the chemist Friedrich Wöhler, this bag of leaves recovered in Bolivia by imperial explorers, at the cost of incredible adventures, is much more important. It is a treasure destined to be studied from every angle in his laboratory at the University of Göttingen, in Lower Saxony.

The scientist summons Albert Niemann, the most promising of his students. It is to this 26-year-old disciple that he entrusts the secret mission: to unlock the mysteries of the coca leaf. Under the fingers of the doctoral student slips the plant with pungent scents, to which centuries of legends, perhaps millennia, confer an almost mystical aura. According to the stories of missionaries, botanists and other adventurers, the coca leaf provides superhuman power, heals the sick, soothes body and soul ailments.

Sitting in front of his pallet, Niemann must not invoke the spirits, but practice science. He knows that illustrious scholars have studied coca before him. Jussieu, Gaedcke, Markham… None was able to determine its chemical formula. He also knows that the competition is tough. Isolating the active ingredients of this plant is a popular challenge among biologists on the Old Continent. But he alone has so much raw material.

In the darkness of the laboratory, days and nights merge. Niemann does not want to disappoint his mentor, the D^r Wöhler. By devoting himself to coca, the student opens a parenthesis in his promising work on the combination of ethylene and sulfur dichloride, also called “mustard gas”, a discovery which could become a formidable weapon in modern warfare.

Bold experiments

Make way for coca, then. Niemann washes the leaves in an alcoholic solution, tinted with a few traces of sulfuric acid. He draws a paste from it, then mixes it with baking soda, then distills it again to obtain elongated white crystals. Thus mixed, kneaded and reduced, the active principle appears little by little, like a photograph passed through the developer in the darkroom. The other students have barely returned to class when the researcher manages to isolate the chemical principles of this powerful alkaloid. He will baptize it “kokain”.

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