A Brief History of
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From crop substitution by the Spanish viceroy in 16th century Peru to today's spraying of Colombian coca fields, all attempts at control of cocaine have been found wanting. This compelling history of the drug by Steven Karch, an expert pathologist in high-profile international drugs-related cases, introduces us to an extraordinarily diverse cast of individuals and institutions. Most notorious are men like Freud and Arthur Conan Doyle, but of equal significance are the botanists at Kew Gardens who unwittingly advanced the globalisation of the cocaine business, the magazine supplement that promoted a cocaine-based wine, and the Cromwellian spy who wrote the first English poem about coca. While today cocaine abuse is a worldwide problem, in 1911 the US Government sued Coca-Cola because its drink didn't contain enough of the drug to merit its name. Karch's social, medical, forensic and political history is a must read for anyone with an interest in the issue of drugs in our society.