1900. COCAINE: “COCO”, “LA REINE DE MONTMARTRE”
1900. COCAINE: “COCO”, “LA REINE DE MONTMARTRE”

Summary/Abstract: 1900. Cocaine: “Coco”, “la reine de Montmartre”. The present study analyses the part cocaine has played in the last decades of the 19th century (and especially at the turn of the century) in the both cultural and scientific environments, allowing the latter to develop one last illusion regarding the discovery of a panacea. As in many other previous cases, scientists believed cocaine to be a potential all-cure, a solution for all sufferance, either physical or spiritual (l’ennui, le mal de siècle). As opium and its derivatives had previously shown their dangers and addictive aspect, cocaine represented in the last decades of the century the favourite alternative, as a medicine as well as a hallucinogen, (under various forms, from medical wine, such as the famous Mariani Wine to the well-known white powder, “la neige”) before the interference of legal prohibition.

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