But cocaine was popularly used long before Freud. Spanish discoverers
of the New World, such as Amerigo Vespucci, tried it in Peru and
reported enthusiastically back home in 1505. Both the Spanish crown
and the church taxed coca production and accepted payment in coca
leaves.
Cocaine was extensively used in the 19^th century in throat and eye
surgeries. It was so commonplace, cheap, and popular that it was not
banned either by the strict Prussians or by the British in the 1868
Pharmacy Act.
People drank cocaine in wine, in Coca-Cola (hence the name), in patent
medicines. Merck was a huge producer of the substance. By the
beginning of last century, everyone was snorting cocaine. Celebrities
from Thomas Edison to Sarah Bernhart - not to mention Hollywood -
extolled the drug's virtues. Cocaine was banned in the USA only in
1914.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/ophs.htm
http://www.stopcocaineaddiction.com/history-of-cocaine.htm
Columbus, Christopher
Columbus was an Italian and lived most of his early life in Portugal,
not in Spain. He was born in Genoa, Italy, no one knows when. He did
"discover" America, the continent - or, at least, is the first
documented European to have done so.
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