It has been estimated that cuca is used by about 8,000,000 of the human race, being consumed in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Rio Negro. In Peru the Indians carry a leathern pouch (the chuspa, or huallqui) for the leaves, and a supply of pulverized unslaked lime, or a preparation of the ashes of the quinoa plant (Chenopodium quinoa), called lliρta or llucta. Three or four times a day labour is suspended for chacchar or acullicar, as the mastication of cuca is termed. The leaves, deprived of their stalks, are chewed and formed into a ball (acullico) in the mouth; a small quantity of the lime or llipta is then applied to the acullico to give it a proper relish. Two or three ounces of cuca are thus daily consumed by each Indian.

Cuca is a powerful stimulant of the nervous system; it enables fatigue to be borne with less nourishment and greater ease than ordinarily, and diminishes the difficulty of breathing in ascending mountains; when used externally it is said to be a remedy for rheumatism and headache.

The poet Cowley represents the Indian “Pachamma” as addressing Venus thus :—

“Our Varicocha first this Coca sent,

Endow’d with Leaves of wondrous Nourishment, Whose Juice succ’d in, and to the Stomach tak’n Long Hunger and long Labour can sustain;

From which our faint and weary Bodies find More Succour, more they chear the drooping Mind, Than can your Bacchus and your Ceres join’d.

Three Leaves supply for six days march afford The Quitoita with this Provision stor’d Can pass the vast and cloudy Andes o’er.”

(Plants, bk. v. p. 121, Works, 9th ed. Lond. 1700.

Dr Pöppig (Travels in Chili and Peru) considers the habit of cuca-chewing to be as dangerous to the health as opium-eating, and in the highest degree pernicious, and Mr J. A. Lloyd alludes to cuca as a “poisonous narcotic” (<7ourn. R. Geog. Soc., 1854, p. 260). It does not, however, appear from the writings of Garcilasso that he observed any ill results among the Peruvian Indians from the practice of cuca-chewing. Von Tschudi refers to numerous instances of their longevity and good health, notwithstanding the habit, almost from boyhood, of masticating cuca three times a day. Markham regards cuca as the least injurious, and the most soothing and invigorating of all the narcotics used by man; and Dr Archibald Smith (Peru as it is, London, 1839) states that cuca when fresh and good, and used in moderate quantity, increases nervous energy, removes drowsiness, enlivens the spirits, and enables the Indian to bear cold, wet, great bodily exertion, and even want of food, to a surprising degree, with apparent ease and impunity. Though it is said, if taken to excess, to 1 Garcilasso de la Vega, writing of the plant, says that it is called cuca by the Indians, coca by the Spaniards; and Father Blas Valera states that the leaves are called cuca both by Indians and Spaniards. (The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, 1609-1617; trans, by C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Soc., 1871). See also, on the name cuca, Christison, Brit. Med. Journ., April 29, 1876, p. 527.

occasion tremor in the limbs, and even a gloomy sort of mania, such dire effects, he considers, must be of rare occurrence, since, after living for years in constant intercourse with persons accustomed to frequent cuca plantations, and with Indian yanacones or labourers, all of whom, whether old or young, masticated the favourite leaf, he never witnessed a single instance in which the chewer was affected with mania or tremor.

Cuca was used by the Peruvian Indians in the most ancient times. It was employed as an offering to the sun, or to produce smoke at the great sacrifices; and the priests, it was believed, must chew it during the performance of religious ceremonies, otherwise the gods would not be propitiated. Cuca is still held in superstitious veneration among the Peruvians, and is believed by the miners of Cerro de Pasco to soften the veins of ore, if masticated and thrown upon them.

Cocaine, the alkaloid to which cuca owes its special properties, was discovered by Niemann in 1859. Tlιe formula assigned to it is Ci6H 19 NO4, or C1 7 H 21 NO4 (Lossen). It is highly poisonous, and its physiological action is apparently identical with that of theine, caffeine, guaraninè, and theobromine, which all, as has been shown by Dr A. Bennet, “induce a series of symptoms affecting the nervous, respiratory, circulatory, vaso motor, and glandular systems” (Edin. Med. Journ., October 1873, p. 323).

Tachudi, Travels in Peru, fee., 1838-42 (Lond. 1847); C. R. Markham, Travels in Peru and India, p. 232 (Lond. 1862).