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Thoughts On Coca, Cannabis, Opium & Tobacco – Gifts Of The Great Spirit

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Lost Secrets of Coca Leaf Wine

Cocaine Injection Kit by Major Pig Pharma Company c. 1875

Do you find it as sinister (and amusing) as I do to watch a Pig Pharma commercial that shows someone supposedly suffering from a grave illness, a bit haggard but still attractive and clearly feeling good, laughing and engaged in doing something fun with a loved one?

Perhaps they are sailing on a lake, playing with their golden retriever, or pushing their darling little children on a backyard swing. There is usually a subtle golden glow around them – kind of a halo, suggesting vibrant life.

Then at the end of the commercial there is always a voiceover saying quietly “Don’t take Zebulan XP if you have kidney, heart, lung or liver problems. May cause seizures, cancer, amputation, bleeding, depression, suicidal thoughts, heart attacks, or death. Ask your doctor is Zebulan XP is right for you.”

While this insidious narrative is playing out, the person is smiling, hugging her kids, and holding hands with a loving spouse. You never really hear the disclaimer. But of course, it’s there, so that Pig Pharma can say, if their “medicine” makes you even sicker than you already are, that you were warned. And as you can see by the image at the top of this post, Pig Pharma has been in the game for a long, long time.

Miracle Cure For Everything

Pig Pharma knows, because they have spent huge money on testing the premise, that if they show happy, healthy, attractive people having fun and living large that you will ignore the voiceover and identify yourself with the happy, healthy people they are showing you instead. The reason is simple – people are hardwired to think “not me” when it comes to warnings and to think “that’s me” when they see an attractive, vibrant healthy person doing things that they can envision themselves doing. “Wow, she’s got the same disease as me, and look at her!  The claims they are making must be true!”

It’s human nature, and Pig Pharma is a master at exploiting it.

Actually Big Tobacco was the first to discover this perverse human psychological quirk – those Surgeon General’s warnings simply don’t register with smokers and if they do, who cares what some pointy-headed bureaucrat says anyhow – if I want to smoke, I’m going to smoke, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

In the 1800’s there were literally thousands of tonics, elixirs, pills, lozenges, and every imaginable form on the market in America and Europe, all containing a wild mix of one or more highly addictive ingredients like heroin, morphine, cocaine, alcohol, chloral hydrate, phenobarbital, plus exotic barks, roots, animal organs, insect parts, and of course the fabled Snake Oil.

Interestingly enough, many of these “remedies” like Snake Oil were loosely based on Native American herbal lore. Snake Oil, for instance, was based on a widespread Plains Indian remedy that involved soaking the rattles of a rattlesnake in pregnant women’s urine, and was used in difficult childbirth for which it was said to be very effective. It was also used to heal wounds and treat painful joints. Along came the White Man and, seeing or hearing of this miraculous cure, thought – “Hmmmm, I could bottle that and make a fortune”. And so he did. And, of course, thousands of women and children died in childbirth anyway. Oh well – news didn’t travel as fast as it does today, and the Snake Oil salesman was off to the next town before suffering any consequences.

With immense fortunes to be made by claiming that your product could cure any of hundreds of health conditions that conventional medicine of the time was unable to cure, these “patent medicines” preyed on the gullible, gave hope to the desperate, and then achieved powerful brand loyalty by addicting their customers. The advertising for these products often bore the solicitous advice that the victim to be sure to order several bottles at a time so that there was no danger of running out before their next supply could be obtained. Hence today’s phrase “Snake Oil Salesman” to describe the lowest of the low who prey on the gullible, steal their money, and let them sicken and die believing they are just about to be cured.

Politicians also seem to have learned this lesson all too well.

It was not just scurrilous con-men who invented and touted these so-called cures for what ails ya’ – hundreds of doctors also got into the act, inventing their own supposedly “special combination” of ingredients that they promised would cure what they knew they could not cure. This was not all that different from today, when doctors take whatever pills that Pig Pharma sends to their offices to convince them, with plenty of financial and other “incentives”, to pass them on to their patients. Most of today’s doctors haven’t read a research paper since medical school and rely on the promises of the vendors that this or that “medicine” will allow the doc to be a hero to their patients by advising them to start taking this or that miraculous cure.

And of course, just like in the 1800’s, the victims of todays doctors and Pig Pharma often wind up worse off than before they began taking the newest and latest pill. But not to worry – modern medicine has advanced so far that there is another pill to counter the bad effects of the previous pill, and another, and another. “We aren’t going to give up on you,” the benevolent doc intones. “There’s always hope. Here, try this.”

There was one manufacturer of “patent medicine” that stood out then, and still stands out today, as an honest man producing an actually helpful medicine that really did help people heal from literally dozens of conditions. Angelo Mariani was a Corsican/French inventor who, in the course of making trips around the world in search of natural medicines, came across the Coca plant in Bolivia and Peru and knew immediately that he had discovered one of nature’s real miracle medicines.

Original Vin Mariani Bottle c. 1880

After several years of experimenting he developed a recipe for producing a healing tonic that he called “Vin Mariani”, which was a simple extract of pure, whole Coca leaf in high quality Bordeaux red wine. When I say “simple extract” I am understating the tremendous amount of work that Mariani put into the development of his medicine. He made many trips to South America to study the properties of Coca leaf, and ultimately decided that if he was going to be able to control the quality of the leaf he used he would have to grow the Coca himself, and he wound up with three large Coca growing operations in Bolivia and Peru, ensuring that he had a steady supply of the highest quality leaf to ship back to France, where he also made sure that the Bordeaux red wine he was using came from some of the best, most dependable chateaus.

In short, Angelo Mariani was one of the few producers of natural herbal medicines who put in the time, effort and capital to actually make a viable medicine in this era of quacks and con-men whose products were always made with the cheapest ingredients, often containing substances that were know to be toxic, even deadly, but who didn’t care because there were always new customers to replace the ones that they addicted and killed.

Again, not much different than the approach of Pig Pharma today who, if they were not at least somewhat regulated, would be right out there selling snake oil just like their pathological forerunners in the 1800’s. And, truly unfortunately, even today there would be millions of desperate people lining up to demand the “miracle cure”.

Because Angelo Mariani and his dedication to quality and to producing a medicine that actually helped to cure people of painful, debilitating and deadly conditions, I have compiled and edited (for clarity) one of Mariani’s most interesting and useful books “The Therapeutic Applications Of Coca”. My hope is that readers today will conclude that this little book is all the proof they need to conclude that Coca leaf should have a prominent place in today’s natural medicines and should be freely available to anyone who can benefit. Then there is the added benefit that having unfettered access to Coca Leaf would enable millions of sick people to throw away their pharmaceuticals, send a goodbye note to their doctor, and enjoy watching Pig Pharma squeal.

In addition to his use of Coca leaf in its natural form, Angelo Mariani was not afraid to use Cocaine in some of his medicines when he saw that it had its health benefits as well. In his use of Cocaine he was always moderate – none of his medicines included enough Cocaine to produce an addictive high. In this book he does, however, describe a number of processes for extracting Cocaine from his high-quality leaf, and when you compare Mariani’s processes to the processes used today, with their nasty and toxic ingredients ranging from kerosene to xylene, you can see that Cocaine does not have to be produced using ingredients that leave toxic residues. The only reason that Cocaine is not being produced today using variations of Mariani’s methods is that it would cost a few pennies more per kilo to do so, and of course the bottom line is all that matters.

Vin Mariani was recognized worldwide as a medicine whose ingredients could be trusted, and whose safety and efficacy – the gold standard even today for pharmaceuticals – was proven. Here are a couple of excerpts from his book to give you a flavor of the kinds of health problems that physicians found could be healed by this simple but profoundly effective Coca leaf medicine.

 

(from “Therapeutic Applications of Coca”)

Vin Mariani

“This is the first of the preparations of Coca and the one most generally adopted; to the tonic and stimulant action of the drug there is added that of a choice quality of wine. The Vin Coca Mariana contains the soluble parts of the Peruvian plant. The combination of Coca with the tannin and the slightest trace of iron which this wine naturally contains is pronounced to be the most efficacious of tonics. The Coca leaves that we employ after careful selection come from three different sources and are of incomparable quality. It is this that gives to our wine that special taste and agreeable aroma which renders it so acceptable to the sick.”

“It is likewise to the combination of these three varieties of Coca leaf in our wine that we can attribute this important fact: during almost 30 years, no matter in how large doses taken, Vin Mariani has never produced cocainism.  (We caution especially against the many so-called Coca wines made with the alkaloid Cocaine alone.)”

“Vin Mariani is a diffusable tonic, the action of which is immediate. This action, instead of being localized on a single organ, the stomach, spreads to the whole system. Taken into the circulation, it awakens in its course the retarded functions of every organ, and this is owing to the presence in our preparation of the volatile principles of the plant.”

“Unlike other tonics, the astringent properties of which lead at length to heat and constipation, Vin Mariani does not produce any disorder of the digestive functions; it stimulates them, exerts a refreshing action on the gastric mucous membrane, and on that account so advantageously replaces the preparations of cinchona, iron, strychnine, etc.”

“There is,” says Dr. Mallez, “a form of anӕmia to which the attention of physicians has not yet been called, and which yields marvelously to the employment of Vin Mariani; we allude to that state of profound depression of the economy, of extremely marked impoverishment of the blood, which also results from the prolonged abuse of balsamics in the treatment of diseases of the urinary passages.”

“The number of persons who, attacked with blennorrhagia, use cubebs, copaiba, turpentine, etc., to a deplorable extent is considerable. So true is this that, out of a hundred young dyspeptics, we may affirm without fear of being in error that at least forty of them have become so by the use of balsamics.”

{Gazette cies Hopitciux, Nov.  23, 1877.)

In 1875, in his Traitement rationnel de la phthisie pulmonaire, Dr. de Pietra Santa said, page 394: “Among the most renowned practitioners of Paris, Péan, Barth, G. Sée, and Cabrol have promptly adopted the preparations of Coca. Ch. Fauvel prescribes it in affections of the respiratory passages. It is in these diseases that I, too, have had occasion to advise its daily use in the most convenient, the most agreeable, and the most active form that of the Vin Tonique de Mariani.”

Thus has been realized Reveil’s prediction: “This substance (Coca) is destined to take an important rank in therapeutics.”

Dr. Libermann, Surgeon-in-Chief, French Army, communicates his experience, as follows:

“I have the honor to inform you of the results which I have obtained in my long career of military practice from the use of Vin Mariani.

“I have used it with great success for profound anaemia resulting from long and tedious campaigns in hot countries, and accompanied, as is nearly always the case, by gastro-intestinal irritation with loss of appetite and dyspepsia.  Two or three Bordeaux-glasses of Vin Mariani daily, removed that condition quite rapidly, by restoring the appetite and the tolerance of the stomach for a tonic aliment.

“I have also employed it in cases, happily rare in our army, of chronic alcoholism resulting from the abuse of brandy, absinthe or strong liquors. The Vin Mariani produced all the excitement sought by drinkers, but had at the same time a sedative influence on their nervous systems. I have frequently seen hardened drinkers renounce their fatal habit and return to a healthy condition.

“I have also used Vin Mariani to save smokers of exaggerated habits from nicotinism. A few glasses of Vin Mariani taken in small doses, either pure or mixed with water, acted as a substitute for pipes and cigars, because the smokers found in it the cerebral excitement which they sought in tobacco, wholly preserving their intellectual faculties.

“I have also employed it with success for chronic bronchitis and pulmonary phthisis. Vin Mariani increases the appetite and diminishes the cough in these two morbid states.

“To combat the cough, I give it mixed with water in the form of tisane, a Bordeaux-glass of Coca wine in a glass of water.

“Although I have confined myself to giving but a rapid glance at the results that I have obtained, I have the statistics, which I keep in reserve should they be needed.  I can certify that Vin Mariani is the most powerful weapon that can be put in the hands of military physicians to combat the diseases, the infirmities, and even the vicious habits engendered by camp life and the servitude of military existence.”

To summarize the experiences of thousands of doctors from the 1800’s, Vin Mariani was one of the most effective natural medicines available; it healed and cured a wide range of diseases, and it did no harm. Give the patient a bottle, give them instructions, and let them go home and heal.

What a concept!


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Why Bolivia & Peru Should Sue Merck & Coca Cola

Pizarro Kneels Before Mama Coca Just Before The Slaughter Of The Incas Begins

People of conscience rightfully condemn the Nazi looting of art and cultural artifacts from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and from homes and museums around Europe. People also rightfully condemn the berserk destruction of cultural and historical treasures in Iraq and Afghanistan by ISIS and the Taliban. Many people also have living memories of colonial genocide and cultural looting of the European empires.

There is a growing body of international law that condemns and demands reparations on the part of former colonial powers like Britain, France, Belgium and The Netherlands whose military and “explorers” looted cultural and historical treasures of Greece, Egypt, Iraq, India, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere in their Empires. The Spanish are certainly near the top of any list of looters of cultural and historical artifacts with their centuries-long conquest and domination of the Indian civilizations of Latin America.

And of course it can hardly be disputed that the Americans top the list of looters with their genocide against Native Americans and blatant theft of their ancient homelands, along with widespread looting of their cultural and historical artifacts, desecration of their graves, and theft of their cultural heritage. When this history is combined with the destruction and enslavement of entire African civilizations, and the forced obliteration of not only whole families and tribes but whole histories, Americans are definitely at the top of any list of historical and cultural criminals.

All of the victims of these various exercises of colonial avarice, hatred and slaughter are at some stage in seeking reparations. The Greeks want their temples back from the British. The Egyptians want the bones and treasures of their ancient Kings returned. Native Americans are demanding the return of their sacred objects and the bones of their ancestors from the Smithsonian. The Iraqis who have seen their Mesopotamian heritage scattered to the winds for centuries are currently being victimized by a blow-dried reincarnation of Jim & Tammy Faye in the person of the “Christian” owners of the tacky little “Hobby Lobby” chain in the US that is charged with large-scale looting on ancient artifacts in the Middle East. These elaborately coiffed smiley-face Oklahoma faux-Jesus worshipers of course deny everything, pleading that they had no idea that these little ole’ tiles were invaluable cultural artifacts.

Cultures worldwide are demanding the same of museums in France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The Chinese are demanding the return of cultural and historical treasures looted by the American-backed Chiang Kai Shek. American Black people are demanding reparations for the theft and brutalization of their families, cultures and history. Latin American cultures are demanding that Spain , Portugal and the Catholic Church return the wealth in gold, silver, culture and history stolen from them over the centuries of Colonial domination.

However, in the midst of all this worldwide outcry against theft of cultural and historical heritage by force and stealth, at least one enormous crime against Native People has been completely overlooked, and I am proposing that the people of Bolivia and Peru, who are the victims of this particular crime, organize and pursue legal remedy under the same body of international law that has begun to recognize the rights of other Native People worldwide.

The crime I am referring to is the theft of the Coca Plant by the European pharmaceutical industry that, since the 1840’s, has made hundreds of billions of dollars from the theft of this Sacred Plant of the Incas and has not paid one penny in reparation or shared any of the huge profits that this industry has enjoyed for over 150 years. Specifically, I am suggesting that Bolivia and Peru jointly sue the German Pharmaceutical company Merck, which was responsible for first looting Coca Plants from Bolivia and Peru and then extracting the alkaloid Cocaine from those plants, and then making Cocaine the core of the company’s fortunes as it grew into the globally dominant pharmaceutical giant of today.

The Coca Plant is indigenous to only one place in the world – the southern Andes – so Merck cannot claim that they took a plant that was readily available worldwide and simply exercised their scientific genius in producing Cocaine. The plants that Merck used to create mountains of gold from a few green leaves came from only one place, and were the cultural and historical heritage of only one People – the Native peoples who today live in poverty in Andes, remote from even a handful of the wealth so jealously guarded by the German pharmaceutical industry and others worldwide who profit from the cultural heritage of the Incas – companies like Coca Cola, who should also be named in any lawsuit for reparations brought by representatives of the Native People of Bolivia and Peru.

The art looted by the Nazis is being returned to the rightful owners under the law, and the families and descendants of those owners are rightfully being compensated. The stolen art, artifacts and bones of ancient civilizations in Greece, Egypt and elsewhere are gradually being pried loose from the talons of the museums erected by Colonial powers to display their loot. Even the American Smithsonian is finally, reluctantly recognizing that it has no right to make the corpses of Native Americans part of their “display”, and are, while doing a lot of foot-dragging, gradually returning the bones and cultural and historical loot stolen from the Native American people. And although there is enormous opposition among the elite and their toadies toward paying reparations to American Black people, at least there is some movement among American Black people themselves to reclaim parts of their stolen cultural and historical heritage.

So why shouldn’t Merck, Coca Cola and others that have profited from the theft of the heritage of the Incas be taken before the bar of international justice and stripped of at least a major portion of the profits that they have made from the theft of the cultural/historical heritage of the descendants of the Incas? The court of jurisdiction would also be responsible for assuring that the money recovered in the name of the descendants of the Incas was not re-looted by politicians in those countries, and instead went into a closely supervised non-profit international organization that was capped in the top salaries it could pay and the administrative overhead it could charge.

I think that this is the right thing to do, and I think it could be done beginning now. The indigenous People of the Andes have an historic opportunity to force the greedy capitalists of Merck, Coca Cola and other evil corporations to crawl on their knees dragging wagonloads of stolen wealth back to the people who are its rightful owners.

 


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Captured By The Kingdom Of Drug Laws

DOS_Guzman

“Criminals like Guzman-Loera are responsible for bringing hundreds of tons of illicit drugs into the United States every year, and are responsible for tremendous amounts of violence and death in our own country and across the world,” the US State Department said yesterday, referring to the most recent capture of Mexico’s Al Capone.

A very standard bit of official verbal misdirection there, but especially annoying when you ask yourself what the hell the Department of State is doing in the drug kingpin commenting business. Of course the answer is – it’s just another use of the Big Lie technique by one of the major Police State conspirators.

“Criminals like Guzman-Loera” would not exist, and the violence and death would not exist, if the US had not erected a Police State structure of Drug Laws that create the criminals and make the violence and the deaths inevitable.

The criminality, the illicitness, the gross profitability, the violence and the death would disappear not if every so-called “kingpin” like Sr. Guzman-Loera were to be arrested, but they would end toot sweet if all the laws against the natural drug plants and their minimally-processed derivatives were simply abolished.

OMG – a Kingdom with no Drug Laws? Imagine.

A US without Police State Drug Laws might still import hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin and Cannabis until domestic growers and producers got going, but without legal or police interference in the traffic those imported items would be priced by the simple process of supply and demand just like Papayas and Bananas.

There would be no incentive for smuggling.

There would be no violence between drug gangs for territories. How many drive-bys do you see between rival beer or cigarette distributors?

There would still be people who abuse the natural drugs and become addicted to them, and maybe even more than today (though studies suggest not), but the lifestyle consequences of addiction would be far, far less harsh for many if not most addicts.

People who chose to waste their lives spaced out 100% on drugs would do so, just like they do now, but people who simply like to maintain a daily buzz – exactly how people do now with Coffee & Sugar, not to mention Alcohol – would be able to do so with no social issues attached.

Finally if drugs were legal and priced at liquor store levels there would be far fewer drug-related crimes like robbery and prostitution. Not a lot of alcoholics rob or fuck strangers simply to buy alcohol. But to buy Cocaine or Heroin in the Kingdom of the Drug Laws you have to have some serious money, and that means stealing or hustling. And the Police State likes it that way just fine – or it wouldn’t be that way, would it?

So if the Drug Law Police State were abolished, the US Department of State and the rest of the government structures supported by Drug Law money, wouldn’t be able to use people like Sr. Guzman-Loera as a boogeyman anymore.

And their budgets would shrink drastically.

That is why it is very important to the US Department of State for Mr. and Mrs. USA to believe their line of evil bullshit even though that is clearly, at least to some of us, exactly what it is.


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Diarrhea & Heroin Overdose – American Tragedies

Around 9000 people died of Heroin Overdose in 2014 in the US – or at least what was officially classified as Heroin Overdose – and that same tragic year over 8000 people died from Diarrhea. The Drug Law Enforcement agencies like to shriek that those 9000 Heroin deaths represent “A 400% INCREASE In these Tragic Deaths!!” But I ask you, if those 9000 deaths are so alarming – where’s the hundred million dollar War On Diarrhea? Where’s the equal love?

Well of course those deaths are each a tragedy whatever the cause – but the Heroin OD deaths are certainly not the kind of tragedy that the government is trying to sell them as, and like all so-called statistics they need to be understood in context.

A Few Leading Causes of Death in US – 2013 (source: CDC)

Traffic                         @45K

Suicide                        @35K

Opioid Pill OD           @40K

Poisonings                  @30K

Misc. Injuries             @25K

Falls                             @24K

Heroin OD                  @9K

Diarrhea                      @8K

So just in the context of raw numbers all the manufactured panic over Heroin overdoses looks kind of – manufactured, doesn’t it? In the context of non-disease causes of death Heroin Overdose is not anywhere near the top of the list. And as for Pills, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the University of North Carolina and Duke University Medical Center, in 2007 there were more deaths from prescription opioid pain killer pills than there were overdose deaths from heroin and cocaine combined.

While my own experience is that I have known plenty of people addicted at one level or another to natural drugs who functioned just fine over a lifetime, I can’t say I’ve ever known a pillhead who was doing that well. Even the CDC figures above show that there are 5 times as many deaths from pill OD as there are from Heroin OD.

But it’s a hell of a story – worthy of Oprah for sure. “400% increase in Heroin Overdose deaths last year!” Right – from about 2500 the year before to about 9000 last year. That’s about 400%, any way you look at it.

Sure looks like Mainstreet America’s got a problem worth throwing a couple of hundred million dollars worth of Police and War machinery at, doesn’t it?  And then maybe when the Feds are done wiping out the Heroin epidemic they can go stalking one of the other killers on the list – I think Diarrhea would be a great next target for the DEA, don’t you? The initials of the agency wouldn’t even have to be changed.

All making fun aside, the true tragedy of Heroin Overdose deaths is that probably a LOT fewer of those 9000 people would have overdosed if they had been able to buy good, pure Heroin as easily as they could have bought a six-pack, and if they then could have gone somewhere clean and safe to enjoy their high.

Does that sound like a strange idea? As easy as a six-pack? Well, why not? Maybe not at a Mini-Mart but how about Heroin at your local natural medicines dispensary where you can also buy Morphine, Opium, Cocaine, and Coca Leaf along with Cannabis.

We know that our society has been thoroughly and deliberately propagandized regarding drugs like Heroin and Cocaine, so when we hear the CDC and DEA sounding alarms over Heroin overdoses we should keep asking, loudly and publicly, if there would be more, or fewer Heroin overdose deaths if good quality Heroin was available through the equivalent of a Medical Cannabis Dispensary.

Is it possible that there are people who really believe that making Heroin illegal keeps people who want to use Heroin from doing so? The cynical forces that created and enforce the Drug Laws and the Police State know better. They know that virtually anyone who wants to use Heroin or any other drug is already doing so. It’s not news that their game isn’t stopping “illegal” drugs – it’s sustaining and expanding a Police State built on the foundation of lies and fear.

The Drug Law mafia are cynically aware of that reality, of course, but they also know that millions of frightened citizens are frozen in fear in front of their TVs, waiting fearfully for the government to make them safe. And in these peoples’ minds, government propaganda has implanted the idea that there are hoards of impressionable children out there yearning to live life addicted to Heroin, sleeping in rat-infested alleys, and earning drug money by giving blowjobs in bus stations. This has them so horrified that they are more than ready to accept the government’s message that only violent punishment and imprisonment of drug users, drug addicts, and especially those evil drug dealers, will keep their the children safe.


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Does This Seem Familiar?

Do these two 19th Century French aperitif labels remind you of anything familiar?

CocaGraphic15x
Like perhaps beautiful young people dancing among flowers on hillsides singing about  “The Real Thing”?

Happy 2016 – Really


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How Coca Leaf Could Balance & Heal Our Gut Microbiome

XRAY
The scientific and medical literature of the 1800s gives us thousands of case studies primarily from Europe, Canada and the US, as well as somewhat limited published research, on the role of Coca Leaf preparations in treating and healing an impressive range of conditions and diseases.

In these case studies Coca Leaf was almost always consumed by the patient as tea (hot water extract) or tonic (alcohol extract), which means that the initial site of almost all the recorded medical action of Coca Leaf on the body was the human gut.

The same has been true for hundreds of generations in the Andes – they chew Coca first to bathe their gut with the healing, balancing juices, and from there the healing influences radiate throughout their muscular, endocrine and nervous systems.

So according to the historical evidence, the healing action of Coca Leaf appears to be centered in the gut.

Fast forward to today.

We now know that it is the health and balance of an individual’s gut microbiome that determines their overall state of health. We know that when that balance is upset gut diseases occur, and we increasingly understand how metabolic and neurological diseases are linked to disturbances of the gut microbiome.

Human adults carry about six pounds of bacteria in our gut, and in this mass of living organisms there are literally tens of thousands of species – most of them still unidentified. However we do know the major players in the human gut, and increasingly we are finding out that changes in the populations of these major players, plus blooms of pathogenic players like klebsiella and c. dificil, seem increasingly likely to be causing serious human illness.

So it may not be making too much of a speculative leap to say that it is likely that one of the important things that 19th Century science is telling us is that Coca Leaf helps to maintain, and works to restore a healthy gut microbiome, although of course those 19th Century doctors knew nothing of the gut microbiome. But they did know that Coca Leaf preparations worked on a wide range of diseases – better than almost anything else in their apothecary.

It certainly wouldn’t take a major research project to confirm or to disprove what I believe the 19th Century medical literature so clearly suggests. As part of the work I’m doing in trying to find funding for “Centros de Coca Curación” I intend to include funding for research studies in this and related areas, engaging reputable degreed scientific and medical researchers in Peru, Bolivia and any other country where they would be free to conduct their work and publish the results.

Readers of this blog know that in past posts I have engaged in a lot of speculation on the modern implications what 19th Century science knew about the healing properties of pure, natural Coca Leaf. I believe that the richness of the human experience recorded in those days by people of science and medicine can guide us today, lost as we are in the machinations of the pharmaceutical and allopathic medical “industries”.

Isn’t it time to begin demanding that legislators in states that have legalized Medical Cannabis now move to legalize first the import of fresh Coca Leaf and Coca Medicines and also to legalize cultivation of Coca Leaf in the United States for general consumption as well as medical purposes?


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Resisting The War On Drugs In Peru’s Coca Valley

Valley2
The BBC has done it again with outstanding photography and gripping first-person stories of the Mochileros who farm and trade Coca in this beautiful valley deep in the Peruvian Andes. The atrocities that the US Drug Laws and our paramilitary War On Drugs have committed in the communities of this remote valley are well-documented in this excellent photo-essay although the crimes and their consequences are implicit rather than explicit. How the people of this beautiful valley live now is well documented here; how they could be living if not for the criminal insanity of the US is left unsaid.

Coca growing goes back to pre-historical times in this valley but the modern world’s insatiable demand for Cocaine has warped traditional Coca Leaf growing into a dangerous mix of guerillas, drug cartels, government agents, and foreign military/covert operations.

The BBC tells this story with a level of story and graphics that takes you directly into the Mochileros’s world and allows you to walk with them on their dangerous path through the mountains with a backpack full of Cocaine.

As I read this story I couldn’t help but wonder what life could be like in this beautiful valley if the people were free to tap into their Andean heritage to make natural coca medicines for the world instead of being forced to work as human mules.

To read BBC’s “Coca Valley” click here.


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A Compelling, Fact-Based Argument For Worldwide Legalization Of Coca Leaf

taita_sonqoThe internet is so deep and wide that no matter how often and how well one searches there is always more to find. I would like to share something I just found with readers of panaceachronicles, in case some of you have not yet read the absolutely stunning article entitled “The Wonders of the Coca Leaf” by Alan Forsberg (2011).

If you have never heard of this remarkable work I am not surprised – neither had I. It seems to have circulated widely in Latin America journals and on Latin American websites but not very much elsewhere in the world. So when I did run across multiple references to it while doing a deep search of some Latin American scientific & medical journals over the weekend and came across at least a dozen links to the article I started trying to download and read it. However when I began following those links – surprise! – most of them were broken and the few that were not 404 somehow froze when I tried to download and read the article. Coincidence, or censorship?

But as almost always happens the censors missed one link, and I was finally able to download the document. I have saved it (offline) just in case you try to access it through this link and find that the link is now mysteriously broken. If that happens let me know and I’ll be happy to send the document to you – with apologies to the author who I am not able to locate to request permission to do so. I will keep looking for Alan, not just to request his permission but also to offer him my profound gratitude for his seminal work.

The article itself is incredibly well-written, thorough, and fully documented, and the hyperlinked bibliography will allow you to browse a wealth of information resources that our society’s keepers would prefer to keep invisible. However, as those of us in the US and the rest of the world awaken and begin to join the fight that the Bolivian people have begun to unshackle this potent natural medicine, this article will provide us with a sharp blade to cut through the evil bullshit that has been piled on the heads of generations of suffering people by the corrupt and manipulative governments, corporations and institutions of the world.

I hope – I know – that you will enjoy reading this work of genius, and will come away from the experience determined to do for Coca Leaf what you have already done for Cannabis.

Here is a glimpse of the table of contents, and a link that I hope works for you.

The Wonders of the Coca Leaf By Alan Forsberg (2011)

Contents

> The Historical Use Value of Coca as a Food and Medicine

> The Traditional Meanings of Coca and its Development as a Symbol of Ethnic Identity

> Coca as a Tool for Social Interaction and Spiritual Protection

> Coca and the Western World: A History of Substance Abuse and Political Pressure

> Development of an International System of Control: Coca Taken Prisoner

> The Social Force of Rebellion behind Coca Deprivation

> A Different Approach to Coca Production – Turning Over a New Leaf

> Suppression of Scientific Research on the Benefits and Uses of the Coca Leaf

> Contemporary Non-traditional Uses of the Leaf: Sharing its benefits with Modern Society

> INCB and the Frontal Assault on Coca

> Coca as an intangible heritage of humanity: Freeing coca from the shackles of international law

> Bibliography

Finally, here is the author’s statement at the conclusion of his essay.

“The overwhelming scientific evidence accumulated in the past 50 years should be enough to allow the international community to correct the historical mistake33 that was made when coca was included on the list of drugs banned by the 1961 Single Convention and coca chewing was slated to be abolished. But there is the danger in the tendency of a reductionist scientific viewpoint to diminish the significance of this complex wonder to merely a chemical compound, a highly nutritious food supplement, or versatile medicine. Equally troubling is the profit-making tendency to want to “add value” by treating this sacred leaf as a raw material to be refined in order to extract a flavoring agent or isolate its notorious alkaloid without recognizing the natural coca leaf’s holistic goodness as well as its sacred and social qualities as an intangible heritage of humanity offered by Andean-Amazonian cultures. The prophetic “Legend of the Coca Leaf” presages us of the difference between the way the leaf is used traditionally in the Andes, and the corrupted form used by Western conquerors. As the Sun God said to the Andean wise man Kjana Chuyma: “[coca] for you shall be strength and life, for your masters it shall be a loathsome and degenerating vice; while for you, natives, it will be an almost spiritual food, for them it shall cause idiocy and madness” (Villamil 1929, Hurtado 2004a).”

“People everywhere need to learn to respect the beneficial and mystical qualities of coca leaf in its natural state and recognize the idiocy and madness behind its prohibition in international law. To do so will require a serious re-evaluation and education campaign to overcome cultural barriers and long held stereotypes. The Bolivian and other Andean governments should discard the INCB directive to “formulate and implement education programs aimed at eliminating coca leaf chewing, as well as other non-medicinal uses of coca leaf” and rather take the time to “educate others about the coca leaf and the need to correct this historical mistake” because, as Virginia Aillón, first secretary to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington states: “Coca is not cocaine. Coca is medicine, food, coca is fundamentally cultural” (Armental 2008, Ledebur 2008 pp.2 & 5).”


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Coca Leaf Prior To Criminal Bankers, Corrupt Governments, Media Flacks, Pharmaceutical Quacks And Barrio Boys With Bling

I thought that you might find it interesting how contemporary these comments are on the differences between Coca Leaf and Cocaine, considering that they are from the introduction to Dr. W. Golden Mortimer’s 1901 book “History of Coca”. You can read “History of Coca”in its entirety in my eBook “The Coca Leaf Papers”, which also contains complete text, bibliographic links, and illustrations from several other early books on the remarkable medical uses of Coca Leaf, all written well before the deviously-named “War On Drugs”.

(Please note – when Dr. Mortimer says “Coca” he is referring to “Coca Leaf”.)

“As to the value of Coca, there cannot be the slightest doubt; as to its utter harmlessness there can be no question. Even cocaine, against which there has been a cry of perniciousness, is an ally to the physician of inestimable worth, greatly superior – to compare it to a drug of recognized potency, not because of any allied qualities – to morphine.”

“The evils from cocaine have arisen from its pernicious use, in unguarded doses, where used hypodermatically or locally for anaesthesia, when an excessive dose has often been administered, without estimating the amount of the alkaloid that would be absorbed, and which might result in systemic symptoms. Medicinally employed, cocaine in appropriate dosage is a stimulant that is not only harmless, but usually phenomenally beneficial when indicated.”

“There has been a looseness of interpretation regarding the term stimulant, which has engendered a dread unfounded in fact. There is a vague belief that any substance capable of producing stimulation, first elevates the system and then depresses it by a corresponding fall. The physiological law that stimulants excite to action, and that all functional activity is due to stimulation is forgotten or not generally appreciated. The name stimulant has commonly suggested alcoholics, while alcoholics suggest intoxication and a possible degradation.”

“It recalls a thought of De Quincey when told that an individual was drunk with opium, that certain terms are given too great latitude – just as intoxication has been extended to all forms of nervous excitement, instead of restricted to a specific sort of excitement. As expressed by him: “Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they have been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, that a patient in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on beefsteak.”

“It will be shown by ample testimony that Coca is not only a substance innocent as is tea or coffee – which are commonly accepted popular necessities – but that Coca is vastly superior to these substances, and more worthy of general use because of its depurative action on the blood, as well as through its property of provoking a chemico-physiological change in the tissues whereby the nerves and muscles are rendered more capable for their work.”

“Strong as may appear this assertion, I believe that the facts here presented will amply indicate that sufficient has not been said upon the benefits to accrue from the liberal use of Coca, Indeed, our knowledge of it is yet in its infancy, and if this present writing will but excite others to continue these investigations and experiments. Coca will achieve the position it should maintain as an aid and support to humanity worthy the greatest popularity and the highest possible respect.”


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Essential Differences Between Coca & Cocaine

It has been a while since I have posted selections from the Coca Leaf literature of the 19th Century, and I thought that readers of this blog might enjoy browsing some more of the insightful observations of Dr. Golden Mortimer and others on the topic of Coca leaf vs. Cocaine. 

Dr. Mortimer was acutely aware of the controversy regarding the potential dangers of the newly discovered alkaloid Cocaine, as well as the widely accepted efficacy of natural Coca Leaf in the treatment of a wide range of diseases and conditions.

The following comments will give the reader a good perspective on the thinking among physicians of the day on this subject. For more depth see Coca Leaf Papers.

“The action of cocaine has been placed midway between morphine and caffeine. In man the initial effect of Coca is sedative, followed by a rapidly succeeding and long continued stimulation. This may be attributed to the conjoined influence of the associate alkaloids upon the spinal cord and brain, whereby the conducting powers of the spinal cord are more depressed than are the brain centers.

In view of these physiological facts it is unscientific to regard strychnine as an equivalent stimulant to Coca or a remedy which may fulfill the same indications, as erroneously suggested by several correspondents. For immediate stimulation Coca is best administered as a wine, the mild exhilaration of the spirit giving place to the sustaining action of Coca without depression.

 “The action of Coca and cocaine, while similar, is different. Each gives a peculiar sense of well being, but cocaine affects the central nervous system more pronouncedly than does Coca, not – as commonly presumed – because it is Coca in a more concentrated form, but because the associate substances present in Coca, which are important in modifying its action, are not present in cocaine.

The sustaining influence of Coca has been asserted to be due to its anӕsthetic action on the stomach, and to its stimulating effect on brain and nervous system. But the strength-giving properties of Coca, aside from mild stimulation to the central nervous system, are embodied in its associate alkaloids, which directly bear upon the muscular system, as well as the depurative influence which Coca has upon the blood, freeing it from the products of tissue waste. The quality of Coca we have seen is governed by the variety of the leaf, and its action is influenced by the relative proportion of associate alkaloids present.

If these be chiefly cocaine or its homologues the influence is central, while if the predominant alkaloids are cocamine or benzoyl ecgonine, there will be more pronounced influence on muscle. When the associate bodies are present in such proportion as to maintain a balance between the action upon the nervous system and the conjoined action upon the muscular system, the effect of Coca is one of general invigoration.

“It seems curious, when reading of the marvelous properties attributed by so many writers to the influence of Coca leaves, that one familiar with the procedure of the physiological laboratory should have arrived at any such conclusion as that of Dowdeswell, who experimented with Coca upon himself.

After a preliminary observation to determine the effect of food and exercise he used Coca “in all forms, solid, liquid, hot and cold, at all hours, from seven o’clock in the morning until one or two o’clock at night, fasting and after eating, in the course of a month probably consuming a pound of leaves without producing any decided effect.” It did not affect his pupil nor the state of his skin. It occasioned neither drowsiness nor sleeplessness, and none of those subjective effects ascribed to it by others. “It occasioned not the slightest excitement, nor even the feeling of buoyancy and exhilaration which is experienced from mountain air or a draught of spring water.”

His conclusion from this was that Coca was without therapeutic or popular value, and presumed: “The subjective effects asserted may be curious nervous idiosyncrasies.”

This paper, coming so soon after the publication of a previous series of erroneous conclusions made by Alexander Bennett, created a certain prejudice against Coca. Theine, caffeine and theobromine having been proved to be allied substances, this experimenter proceeded to show that cocaine belonged to the same group. As a result of his research he determined that “the action of cocaine upon the eye was to contract the pupil similar to caffeine,” while the latter alkaloid he asserted was a local anesthetic; observations which have never been confirmed by other observers.

In view of our present knowledge of the Coca alkaloids, it seems possible that these experiments may have been made with an impure product in which benzoyl-ecgonine was the more prominent base. However, the absolute error of Bennett’s conclusions has been handed down as though fact, and his findings have been unfortunately quoted by many writers, and even crept into the authoritative books.

Thus Ziemssen’s Cyclopcedia of the Practice of Medicine which is looked upon as a standard by thousands of American physicians, quotes Bennett in saying: “Guaranine and cocaine are nearly, if not quite, identical in their action with theine, caffeine and theobromine.” The National Dispensatory refers to the use of Coca in Peru as being similar to the use of Chinese tea elsewhere – as a mild stimulant and diaphoretic and an aid to digestion – which are mainly the properties of coffee, chocolate and guarana, and Bennett is quoted to prove that the active constituents of all these products: “Although unlike one another and procured from totally different sources possess in common prominent principles, and are not only almost identical in chemical composition, but also appear similar in physiological action.”

“These statements, which are diametrically opposed to the present accepted facts concerning Coca, are not merely a variance of opinion among different observers, but are the careless continuance of early errors, and suggest the long dormant stage in which Coca has remained, and has consequently been falsely represented and taught through sources presumably authentic.

“As may be inferred from its physiological action. Coca as a remedial agent is adapted to a wide sphere of usefulness, and if we accept the hypothesis that the influence of Coca is to free the blood from waste and to repair tissue, we have a ready explanation of its action.

Bartholow says: “It is probable that some of the constituents of Coca are utilized in the economy as food, and that the retardation of tissue-waste is not the sole reason why work may be done by its use which can not be done by the same person without it.”

Stockmann considers that the source of endurance from Coca can hardly depend solely upon the stimulation of the nervous system, but that there must at the same time be an economizing in the bodily exchange. An idea which is further confirmed by the total absence of emaciation or other injurious consequences in the Indians who constantly use Coca. He suggests that “Coca may possibly diminish the consumption of carbohydrates by the muscles during exertion. If this is so, then less oxygen would be required, and there is an explanation of the influence of Coca in relieving breathlessness in ascending mountains.”