Despite disco being centuries away, residents of 17th century Italy may have had a hankering for cocaine. Preserved human brains from Milan tested positive for the drug, centuries before it was previously believed to have come into popular use in Europe.
The mummified gray matter in question was found in the Ca’Granda crypt, a burial site near a major hospital of the time. The Ospedale Maggiore was known for treating Milan’s poor and otherwise disadvantaged.
Researchers from the University of Milan conducted several prior studies on the remains found in the crypt, seeking to determine what the medical treatments of the day may have looked like. In their latest study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, they ran toxicology tests on brain matter scraped from skulls. In two of the nine samples tested, the researchers found active components from Erythroxylum coca, the formal name for the plant from which cocaine is derived.
The presence of cocaine in these remains is surprising. The coca plant is native to South America and was unknown to Europeans until the arrival of Spaniards in the New World in the 15th century. While there were some efforts to ship samples of the plant back home, they deteriorated badly during the long ship ride across the Atlantic Ocean. Until now, it was widely thought that cocaine hadn’t been introduced to Europe until the 1800s.
Some evidence contradicts this narrative, including records from a French botanist who received a shipment of Erythroxylum in the 1750s. Milan, ruled by Spain in the 1600s, was also known to import plants from the New World, so it’s entirely possible that coca plants could have made it over.
This discovery doesn’t mean that residents of Milan were doing lines while listening to the 17th century version of Interpol. One of the compounds detected in the samples was hygrine, an alkaloid found in coca leaves, which indicates the plant had not been turned into its familiar powder form. The old Milan residents, whoever they were, likely consumed the drug by chewing on the leaves.
The researchers acknowledged that the presence of the drug doesn’t mean it was used for treatment in the hospital. It wasn’t documented in any hospital records as a drug that would have been administered, leading the researchers to conclude that the plant may have been used for its euphoric effects. If so, the study may have found some of the first European recreational use of a drug that has grown into a billion dollar industry and caused thousands of overdose deaths per year.
Cocaine wasn’t the only drug now known for recreational use to be found in the remains discovered in the Ca’Granda crypt. A 2023 analysis of femoral bones by the same researchers found traces of cannabis. 17th century Milan sounds wild.
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