Coca leaves have psychoactive and therapeutic properties
Fabiano Sodi/Alamy
The mummified mind tissue of two individuals present in a 17th-century crypt in Milan, Italy, comprises traces of cocaine, revealing that the drug was being utilized in Europe 200 years sooner than beforehand recorded.
Coca leaves, from which cocaine is derived, have been chewed within the plant’s native South America for hundreds of years, however the drug solely took off in Europe within the 19th century, when it was chemically remoted from the plant.
Spanish conquerors realized of the psychoactive and therapeutic properties of coca leaves, however…
