Fabelhafte Dinge': Arzneimittelnarrative zu Coca und Cocain im 19. Jahrhundert~1

摘要

"Fabulous Things". Drug Narratives about Coca and Cocaine in the19th Century. This contribution focuses on the history of Coca leaves and Cocainein the second half of 19th century Europe. Even though, to date, no direct link hasbeen established between the activities of the Milano physician Paolo Mantegazza,and the Gottingen chemist Friedrich Wohler, it is not a mere coincidence that bothpublished their findings in the same year, namely, 1859. Mantegazza authored thefirst treatise claiming that Coca had psychoactive qualities and touted its broad the-rapeutic faculties; he claimed that it should be introduced into European pharmaco-therapy. In Wohler's laboratory, cocaine was isolated from leaves by his pupil AlfredNiemann; later, Wilhelm Lossen refined and corrected Niemann's results. Narrativesabout medicinal drugs often streamline history into a story that starts with multiplemeanings and impure matters and ends with well-defined substances, directed atclear-cut diseases and symptoms. In the case of Coca, however, the pure substancetriggered no such process well into the 1880s, whereas the leaves continued to circu-late as an exotic, pluripotent drug whose effects where miraculous and yet difficultto establish.