When its anaesthetic properties were demonstrated in 1884, one US neurologist breathlessly hailed a discovery ‘almost as wonderful and important’ as electricity.
In the UK, a ‘new era’ was announced by a senior doctor in the British Medical Association.
Cocaine was, as one report put it, the ‘magic drug’ – a substance which could cure all manner of ills, from coughs and colds to toothache and ‘nervous debility’.
Even Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous fictional detective, was an avid user – albeit with some firm disapproval from his trusty sidekick Dr Watson.
As historian Dr Douglas Small explains, the Victorians saw cocaine as a ‘high-tech solution to all kinds of medical problems’.
‘It was thought of a miracle drug and described as a wonder of the age,’ he told MailOnline.
One application for its use as an anaesthetic was in cosmetic surgery, including early versions of the procedure that celebrities have come to love: the nose job.
All of this is hard to believe now, more than a century on from when cocaine – which is loved for the bursts of high-energy euphoria it induces in users – was first regulated in Britain.
Around 1 in 40 people aged 15 to 64 in the UK use the substance that is known by nicknames including Charlie, White Lady, Bolivian Marching Powder and Foo-foo dust, even though it is a ‘Class A’ drug carrying a maximum sentence for possession of seven years in prison.
Cocaine – as it became known from 1860 – was first extracted from the leaves of the coca plant in 1855.
As Dr Small has outlined in his published research, the drug came to the attention of medics worldwide in 1884, when Austrian trainee ophthalmologist Karl Koller found that applying the substance to the surface of the eye completely numbed the area.
Until then, chloroform had been the anaesthetic of choice for nearly four decades, despite the significant risk it posed to health.
Now there was a drug that could keep pain away from patients without knocking them out – meaning that eye operations and other procedures could be performed more easily.
News of the discovery spread quickly. The same year, the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital became the first institution in the UK to use the new drug.
Walter G Smith, writing in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science in 1885, told of the ‘wonderful’ effects of cocaine as a local anaesthetic.
‘With such a character so suddenly acquired, cocaine seems practically to have sprung into existence fully armed for a great amount of future good in the art of medicine,’ he went on.
In 1886, another writer declared it a ‘wonder of the age’.
They went on: ‘Cocaine flashed like a meteor before the eyes of the medical world, but, unlike a meteor, its impressions have proved to be enduring; while it is destined in the future to occupy a high position in the estimation of those whom duty requires to combat the ravages of disease.’
Dr Small, the author of Cocaine, Literature, and Culture, 1876-1930, said: ‘There is a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of energy behind it because it looks like Victorian medicine has succeeded in creating a perfect painkiller, a perfect remedy for all kinds of problems.’
When chemist John Stith Pemberton created the original formula for Coca-Cola in 1886, trace quantities of cocaine found in the drink’s coca leaf extract gave it a particularly distinctive kick.
By 1903, workaholic Methodist Asa Candler – who was handed control of the brand by Pemberton before his death in 1888 – had removed all traces of cocaine from the drink.
It of course went on to become the world’s best-known brand, and now nearly two billion people consume its drinks every day.
Amid the early obsession with cocaine, the drug became a key ingredient in medicines sold to combat the likes of asthma, dysentery, syphilis and even sore nipples.
Excitable adverts for products containing the drug included one hailing the brilliance of ‘Neurogene’, made from a ‘compound syrup of cocaine’.
Available in ‘all chemists’, it was marketed to ‘Speakers, Singers, Athletes, Business Men, and all who suffer from Brain Fag, or Nervous Debility’.
Another notice told how you could ‘clear your voice with menthol and cocaine pastilles’.
Britons could, one doctor declared, ‘completely arrest’ a cold using ‘a 4 per cent solution of hydrochlorate of cocaine applied to the nose by means of a camel’s hair brush’.
Also on offer was a cocaine nasal spray for colds and flu that could be carried in the ‘waistcoat pocket’.
As for cocaine lozenges, they promised to ‘check all sea-sickness and sickness during pregnancy.’
As early as 1887, New-York based doctor John Orlando Roe was offering customers the chance to have a ‘tip-tilted’ nose resculpted after being numbed with cocaine, so they could get the ‘desired aquiline shape’.
The drug’s numbing effects made it similarly useful in treatments such as hair removal and the tattooing industry.
Its popularity was such that even Sherlock Holmes was a user.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Holmes novel, 1890 work The Sign of Four, opens with the sleuth injecting himself with a ‘seven-per-cent solution’ of cocaine.
In the face of protests from his faithful assistant Dr Watson, Sherlock insists the drug is ‘transcendingly stimulating and clarifying to the mind’.
Author Nicholas Meyer wrote a pastiche of a Holmes novel, where he depicted Dr Watson’s efforts to enlist the help of Sigmund Freud to cure his friend of his addiction.
The book, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, led to the 1976 Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Nicol Williamson as Holmes.
Tellingly though, Doyle’s Sherlock gave up the drug.
In 1904 short story The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter, Watson – speaking of Holmes – tells the reader: ‘For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career.’
Tales of severe addiction to the drug became widespread. The British Medical Journal described the ‘bitter thorn’ of cocaine’s ‘sweet rose’.
Industry publication Druggist Circular described the ‘dark side’ of the drug, noting that, ‘it makes a good servant, but a poor master’.
Global concern about drug use led to the 1912 Hague Convention, where it was decided that the use of opium, morphine and cocaine should be confined to ‘legitimate medical purposes’.
In January 1916, ‘Quex’, the gossip columnist of a popular daily newspaper, told readers: ‘I see that other people are turning their attention to the growing craze for opium smoking… West End Bohemia is hearing some dark stories of what is going on.
‘But still more prevalent is the use of that exciting drug cocaine.’
The columnist added: ‘It is so easy to take — just snuffed up the nose; and no one seems to know why the girls who suffer from this body and soul racking habit find the drug so easy to obtain.
‘In the ladies’ cloakroom of a certain establishment two bucketfuls of thrown-away small circular cardboard boxes were discovered by the cleaners the other day — discarded cocaine boxes.’
Cocaine was first regulated in the UK later that year under the sweeping Defence of the Realm Act.
Regulation 40b restricted its sale and possession to people defined as ‘authorised persons’. Users now needed a doctor’s prescription to get cocaine legally.
The Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 then solidified most of the provisions of Regulation 40B.
By then, the Daily Mail had called cocaine a ‘vice of the neurotic, not a habit of the normal’.
And its usefulness in medical applications also declined as new local anaesthetics proved to be effective without carrying the societal and health risks of cocaine.
Legislation did not mean the problem went away, with prohibition creating a huge black market.
It was the drug of choice for members of high society in the 1920s Jazz Age, and, although its popularity ebbed in the 1930s and 1940s, it came back into fashion with a bang.
The disco craze of the 1970s saw its use boom, and City workers in the 1980s used it to survive regimes of extremely long hours with very little sleep.
Its popularity made drug lords such as the legendary Colombian Pablo Escobar extremely rich.
But beyond the glamour of the drug is the addiction, suffering and death. Celebrities including Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse and Richard Pryor died under its influence.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Britain had the world’s highest rate of cocaine use in 2023 – with only Australia in front.
Now, its negative effects – restlessness and paranoia the least of them – are well-known.
The greatest visible harm is done to the nose itself, which can collapse with heavy use of the drug.
And it is frequently cut with other chemicals that are even more harmful than the drug users think they are buying.
It is a sharp comedown from the ‘wonder drug’ proclamations made at the end of the Victorian era.
