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| ISBN-13: | 9781780940212 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hesperus Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2011 |
| Series: | On Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 114 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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On Cocaine
By Sigmund Freud
Hesperus Press Limited
Copyright © 2011 David CarterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84391-601-7
CHAPTER 1
Letters to Martha: 21 April and 19 June, 1884
Vienna, Monday, 21 April 1884. At the office of the Journal
You are amazed, I'm sure, my Darling, that I'm sitting here again, after I wrote to you from the same spot only on Saturday. This is the result of the things I neglected while I was ill, and it's really embarrassing for me. Generally things are not working out for me, for the sake of a successful practice I can't work in the laboratory, nor can I celebrate the works, from which I can indeed expect a little honour. Today I was cut to the quick when my proofs of the methodological report arrived from Leipzig. Since doing that I haven't worked on anything except two small discoveries. Otherwise I am very well however, fresh as hardly ever before, and feel really fond of you, in a way I never felt in our most beautiful days here, and if I write to you so rarely, then it is the awful conflict between doing my duty and working for the Journal which is responsible - even yesterday, Sunday, I was very busy. Paneth visited me today and informed me, that perhaps I would be called out to Schwechat to deal with a case of nervous illness. Alois Schönberg has indicated the prospect of my being made an offer of employment in Pest. These are only the first steps, which not much may come of, but they are nevertheless first steps. Frau Sch. is doing much better, and I'll be glad if no more incidents occur, so that I can release her from treatment in a week's time. I'll then send her straight off to the countryside.
There's one project and one hope that I am contemplating at the moment, which I want to tell you about; perhaps nothing further will come of it. It's a therapeutic experiment. I'm reading about cocaine, the active component in coca leaves, which many Indian tribes chew, to give themselves strength to deal with deprivations and stressful situations. A German has experimented with this material on soldiers and actually reported that it made them marvellously strong and efficient. I will have the material sent to me and experiment with it, based on obvious considerations, on heart conditions and also on cases of weakness with a nervous origin, especially on the miserable condition that occurs with morphine withdrawal (as in the case of Dr Fleischl). Perhaps many others are using it, and perhaps it will be of no use. But I don't want to give up trying it out, and, as you know, if you often try to do something and always want to do it, then eventually you'll be successful. We don't need more than one such lucky success, in order to be able to start thinking about furnishing our house. But don't get it fixed in your head, my little woman, that it will necessarily be successful this time. You know that the temperament of the researcher requires two basic qualities: being sanguine in conducting experiments and critical in one's work.
After talking away about everything concerning myself, I come to you, my dear little girl. No, I'm still here, I can't think of seeing you in the spring, I would like to have done something fine before we meet again. And I'm looking forward to that enormously. I am expecting the newspaper deliverer to come today with the parcel and the money. It's true that it seems he won't come, but your visiting cards and your seal won't be long in coming anyway. It's nice that you want something for yourself, and it pleases me very much that you go for walks in the little wood. Do you go alone, my dear little Martha? Dolfi said yesterday that it would be very nice, if you could say some time, and say it proudly of course: 'I waited four years for my husband.' By the way, Martha, what do you think of the fact that little Pauli has already found happiness in love? With the twenty-eight-year-old brother of her friend, Fräulein Glaser, with whom she usually spends special holidays. He's a doctor of law and an articled clerk in a lawyer's office in our town of Neutitschein in Moravia. So he's already a person of some seriousness. What do you think of that? Don't mention it to anyone, and I don't want to say yet that the little one is definitely given away, but doesn't it look as though the silly girls will all quickly be gone, 'like hot cakes'? Dolfi is the only one who is still free, and she said yesterday - I had invited her to afternoon tea to repair my black coat - 'It must be marvellous to be the bride of an educated man, but an educated man won't have me, don't you think?' I couldn't help laughing greatly at this perception of herself.
My dear little Martha, the newspaper deliverer has just come. He brought only a few fine things, but there was a letter with twenty-eight guilders. How great it is, when a person has some money. Now, my dear, you will get ten more guilders from me. I'll keep them for a little while, because I don't have any other money, but they belong to you. What do you still need for your stock of clothes? Are Jersey cardigans still fashionable?
I'll keep the money for a while, not because I am miserly, but because the cocaine will cost me some money and because yesterday, when I had to pay out ten guilders for a piece of electrical apparatus, I made myself poor.
Now we've got all the pieces of apparatus together, and tomorrow we will begin our work. I only go to see Frau Sch. once a day however. Schönberg is struggling with Kant and Horace, but looks well and is in good spirits. My dear Martha, don't you think this all bodes well for the second book?
So, come on, write as much to me about yourself, as I am writing about myself. And also tell me whether you are very well, indeed completely well, whether the iron medicine is doing you well and whether you are drinking any wine. I'll be angry if you are not doing both.
You wanted to go back to many things in one of my recent letters. What were they then?
With warm regards
Your Sigmund
Vienna, Thursday, 19 June 1884
My Darling,
I can't remember having been in such a rush, otherwise I would have answered all your dear good little letters with long sheets full of discussions, but today I also have to make it brief. I hope we'll certainly be able to chat together soon.
The cocaine work was not finished until last night. The first half has already been corrected today, and will be one and a half pages thick. The few guilders, which I have earned from doing it, I had to deduct from the money lost, by having chased away my student today and yesterday. Now I've got the proofreading of a second work in front of me, I also have to carry out some electrical treatment, and carry out my duties for the Journal, but I am as healthy as a lion, cheerful and happy, and you can imagine that this is not a mood in which I want to drop everything and become an attendant for a mental patient.
My dear girl, you must banish completely from your mind those gloomy thoughts, such as thinking that you are standing in the way of my work. You know that the key to understanding my life is that I can only work, when spurred on by great hopes for things which dominate me completely. I was completely weary of life before I had you, and now that I have you, 'in principle', possessing you completely has become generally a requirement I impose on life, which provides me with little other pleasure. I am very defiant and reckless, and need great incentives. I have done a whole lot of things which all prudent people must consider very foolish. For example going in for science when you are very poor, and winning the heart of a poor girl when you are a very poor man. I must go on living in this fashion, risking a lot, hoping a lot, and working a lot. I've long been a lost cause for normal middle-class prudence. And now I shan't see you, or will see you only in three months, in our uncertain circumstances, and with such unpredictable people as those in our family. In three months Eli could be in Hamburg, and the situation of my own people could make it impossible for me to travel. In short, I don't know what the future will bring. I can't rely on anything, but I know that I need to be revitalised by holding you in my arms again as urgently as I need food and drink. I know that I have burdened you with enough trouble and sacrifice, not to deprive you of a few weeks of being happy together, although you yourself would willingly do without it. I'll follow my own impulse, and continue to take a risk. I'll fortify myself with thoughts of you and continue, with renewed strength, to attempt to raise my spirits, and not tear myself away from all kinds of work for three months. The profit won't be a great one. What money is saved will be forfeited in the form of time, and not much money will be saved. Can you imagine that I would have a thousand guilders stowed away and let Rosa and Dolfi go hungry?
I would give them at least half of it, and what is left would be sufficient for that period, in which I could make up for what's lost. I won't be doing right by them, but I'll be doing what is right in terms of my own nature and our circumstances. I feel at one with myself about this. Today Paneth was here, and of course he was totally convinced that it was necessary that I should accept the post, but I have the good quality of having faith in myself. I have also come across many people, who admit that I'm right. But I know that I will see you again, my Dear. Keep healthy. I must finish here, because some more proofreading has arrived.
Your Sigmund
CHAPTER 2On Coca, 1884
I. The Coca Plant
The coca plant, erythroxylon coca, is a four to six foot high shrub, similar to our blackthorn, which is cultivated extensively in South America, especially in Peru and Bolivia. It flourishes best in the warm valleys on the eastern slopes of the Andes, at 5,000 to 6,000 English feet above sea level, in a climate with high rainfall but free of extreme temperatures. The leaves, which serve as an indispensable stimulant for about ten million people, are 'round like an egg, five to six cm long, petiolated, have a whole rim, with edging, and are distinguished by two creases in the form of lines which stand out especially on the underside, and which, like nerve branches, accompany the median veins from the base of the leaf to its point in a flat curve.' The shrub bears small white flowers in twos and threes in tufts on the sides and egg-shaped red fruit. It is planted as seeds or cuttings; the young plants are transplanted after one year and provide the first harvest of leaves after eighteen months. The leaves are considered to be mature, when they have become so stiff that their stems break off when you touch them. They are then dried quickly in the sun or with the aid of a fire and sewn up in sacks (cestos) to be transported. A coca shrub provides, in favourable circumstances, four to five harvests of leaves every year and remains fertile for thirty to forty years. With such a large yield (allegedly thirty million pounds a year), coca leaves are an important item of trade and source of taxation for those countries.
II. History and Use in the Country
When the Spanish conquerors forced their way into Peru, they found that the coca plant was being cultivated in that country and was held in high regard, and was even used in close conjunction with the religious customs of the country. Legend has it that Manco Capac, the divine son of the Sun, had, in primeval times, come down from the crags of Lake Titicaca and brought his father's light to the wretched inhabitants, and had given them knowledge possessed by the gods, the ability to employ useful skills and the gift of coca, that divine plant, which satisfies the hungry, strengthens the weak and causes them to forget their bad fortune. Coca leaves were presented as offerings to the gods and they were chewed while performing religious practices, and they were even put into the mouths of the dead, to assure them of a favourable reception in the other world. As the chronicler of the Spanish conquest, himself a descendant of the Incas, reports, coca was at first scarce in the country and its consumption the prerogative of the rulers. At the time of the conquest however it had already been available to everyone for a long time. Garcilasso endeavoured to defend coca against the ban which the conquerors had imposed on it. The Spaniards did not believe in the marvellous effects of the plant, which because of its role in the religious ceremonies of the conquered people they suspected of being the devil's work. A council in Lima even forbad its consumption for being heathen and sinful. But they changed their attitude when they noticed that the Indians could not accomplish the heavy work imposed on them in the mines, if the consumption of coca was denied them. They settled for distributing coca leaves to the workers three or four times a day and allowing them short rest periods, so that they could chew their beloved coca leaves. Thus coca has retained its standing among the natives up to the present day. Traces of the religious veneration with which it was held can still be found.
An Indian always carries with him on his travels a pouch containing coca leaves (called a chuspa) and also a flask of the ashes of the plant (llicta). He forms a bite-size piece (acullico) of the leaves in his mouth, pierces it several times with a thorn dipped in the ashes and chews it slowly and thoroughly with substantial secretion of saliva. In other areas a kind of earth, called tonra, is said to be added to the leaves instead of ashes of the plant. Chewing three or four ounces of the leaves daily is not considered immoderate. According to Mantegazza, Indians start using this stimulant in early youth and continue with it till the end of their lives. Whenever they have an exhausting journey to go on, or whenever they make love to a woman, and generally whenever a greater demand is made on their strength, they increase the usual dose.
What purpose it is intended to achieve by the addition of the alkaline salts in the ashes, is unclear. Mantegazza reports that he had chewed coca leaves with and without llicta and felt no difference. According to Martius and Demarle, the cocaine, which is probably contained in a compound with coca tannin, is released by the alkaline salts of the plant ashes. A llicta analysed by Bibra consisted of 29% calcium carbonate and magnesia, 34% potash, 3% alumina and iron, insoluble compounds of alumina, silica, and 17% iron, 5% carbon and 10% water.
A wealth of evidence is available showing that under the influence of coca Indians can bear exceptional strain and accomplish heavy work, without needing any actual nourishment while doing it. Valdos y Palacios reports that with the aid of coca Indians can go on foot for hundreds of hours, and what is more can run faster than horses, without showing any signs of fatigue. Castelnau, Martius, and Scrivener all confirm this, and Humboldt talks of it in his journey to the equinoctial regions as a universally known fact. The reports by Tschudi about the achievements of a cholos (person of mixed race), whom he was able to observe closely, are much quoted. The man carried out laborious excavations for him for five days and five nights, without sleeping more than two hours every night and without consuming anything but coca. After the work was finished he accompanied him during a two-day ride, running alongside his mule. He assured him that he would willingly carry out the same work again without eating, if he was given enough coca. The man was sixty-two years old and had never been ill.
In The Journey of the Frigate Novara there are reports of similar examples of heightened capability through the use of coca. Weddell, von Meyen, Markham, and even Poeppig, who is the source of much malicious gossip about coca, can only confirm this effect of coca, which since it has become well known, has not ceased to arouse the astonishment of the world.
Other reports stress the ability of the coqueros (coca-chewers) to tolerate a longer period of doing without food without any trouble. According to Unanuè, only those inhabitants of the city of La Paz who had consumed coca could stay alive during the famine, when it was besieged in 1781. According to Stevenson, the inhabitants of several areas of Peru often refrain from all forms of nourishment for days on end by using coca, without interrupting their work.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from On Cocaine by Sigmund Freud. Copyright © 2011 David Carter. Excerpted by permission of Hesperus Press Limited.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,On Cocaine,
Letters to Martha: 21 April and 19 June, 1884,
'On Coca', 1884,
Letter to Martha: 16 January, 1885,
'A Contribution to Knowledge about the Effect of Coca', January, 1885,
Addenda, February, 1885,
'On the General Effect of Cocaine', March, 1885,
Letter to Martha: 2 February, 1886,
Letter to Martha: 10 February, 1886,
'Remarks on Cocaine Addiction and the Fear of Cocaine', 1887,
The Dream of 'Irma's Injection', July, 1895 (published in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900),
From 'Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses', January and February, 1898,
The Dream of 'The Botanical Monograph', March, 1898 (published in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900),
Letter to Fritz Wittels, 15 August, 1924,
From 'An Autobiographical Study', 1925,
Notes,
Select bibliography,
Biographical note,