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Kim Embrey, "Coca and the Victorians: From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug, 1835–1912" (Transcript Publishing, 2025)
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Dr. Kim Embry
I was groomed to become one of his wives.
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Disorder Podcast Host
This week on Disorder, the podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein survivor tells me her story and what justice looks like for her.
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Dr. Kim Embry
I want to see action, and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk. You need to start walking the walk now.
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Disorder Podcast Host
It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.
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Dr. Kim Embry
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Kim Embry about her book titled Coca and the Victorians From Botanical Curiosity to regulate a drug, 1835-1912, published by Transcript Publishing in 2025. Now, obviously, coca is a big deal now, but as the subtitle of the book suggests, it didn't start off as a massively important drug that was known in all sorts of countries, including, and of course, beyond Britain in the uk. It started off, as the subtitle suggests, as more of a curiosity, as a kind of like, what's going on with this plant? So of course that suggests just from that phrase alone that we've got an intriguing transformation to investigate, because nothing Kind of comes out of nothing. So this book helps us understand what, what is actually going on, obviously, in terms of science, technology, medicine, but also in terms of culture and perception and media and information. All of these things are very much intertwined to understand coca in the Victorian period and beyond. So, Kim, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to tell us about your work.
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Dr. Kim Embry
Well, thank you very much for having me. Hello, everyone. My name is Kim Embry and I'm a historian of Victorian Britain and a secondary school teacher in Germany. My. Thank you. My book was inspired by one of the greatest Victorian writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his most infamous character, Sherlock Holmes. I've always enjoyed reading his stories, but as an adult, I wondered how Holmes, who was portrayed as a drug addict and a genius detective at the same time, how that went together, because nowadays you definitely think differently of an addict than they did 150 years ago. So I decided to take an online course at the University of Oxford to learn more about this interesting time in history. And it intrigued me to dig into the understanding of drugs more deeply. And initially my focus was on opium. Then I went for comparative analysis of both opium and coca. But it eventually I decided to focus on coca alone.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Always fun to hear about the origins of projects. Thank you for that introduction. I think the other kind of key foundational piece that's worth us covering at the beginning of our conversation is the subtitle of the book that talks about the years that you cover. Right. We're starting in 1835 and going to 1912. Why those start and end dates?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Well before the 19th century, Kirku was widely unknown in Europe. The Iberians encountered the drug on their conquest in South America in the 16th century, but couldn't bring it back to Europe due to logistical reasons. Reports on the marvelous plant of the Andes, as it was called, only appeared in the early 19th century. And 1835 seemed a good start date because this was when the first drawing of the cocoplan appeared in a British journal, which was Hooker's companion to the botanical magazine. And 1912 marked a good end date because in that year, the first global restrictions for drugs were agreed upon in the Hague Convention. And both coca and cocaine were part of these regulations and still are today.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, yeah, that's a very helpful explanation then of start and end, and gives us a sense of kind of how much changes in not that large a space of time. So if we start then at the beginning, can you tell us a bit more about what various European explorers thought about Coco when They initially encountered it.
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Dr. Kim Embry
So reactions to Kirka by European explorers were quite inconsistent. When the Spanish first encountered KIRK in the 16th century, they called it a delusion of the devil. Kirku was seen as an Indian vice and something morally suspect and culturally inferior. And. But that attitude didn't last long since they realized that Andean laborers depended on coca. They needed it to work in the silver mines. So suddenly coca became economically useful. The Spanish taxed it and they traded with it. And it was only by the 19th century that German and also British explorers offered a much wider range of interpretations. Some, like German Eduard Pripik, describe Kirke in deeply racist and dismissive terms, portraying it as a harmful habit of the primitive peoples. And others, like Funchiuti or Weddell, were much more sympathetic about it. They experimented with coca themselves and emphasized its ability to reduce hunger, increase endurance and support health. So as you can see, Kirke was filtered through the lens of cultural bias, scientific curiosity, as you already described it, and increasingly also economic interest.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, I think to me the economic interest is the most intriguing part because what it seems like happens from reading your book pretty quickly is from this point of curiosity to not just, oh, we could do something with this in terms of making money, but, but much further beyond that. Right. You talk about a global coca network, which sounds pretty intensive. So how and why did the British develop all of this? Especially because they already had the opium trade going on with the British Empire. Like, why did they want a global coca network?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Yeah, well, it actually seems surprising that Britain would take interest in coca at all given how deeply opium was embedded in the British imperial economy. And especially the trade with China generated a massive revenue. And in contrast to that, coca was the exotic plant of the Andes. Difficult to access and much less understood. So the British didn't engage with the coca trade early. In fact, they lagged behind countries like Germany and France primarily because they lacked first hand knowledge with the plant. But what changed in the late 19th century was the isolation of cocaine in 1859 and especially its medical application in the 1880s. Suddenly, coca was pharmaceutically and economically interesting. And at that point, Britain began to see coca not only as a curiosity, but but as a potential imperial commodity. But there was one problem. Coca couldn't easily be grown across most of the empire due to its specific climatic requirements. So Britain experimented with cultivation in colonial territories which evolved from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. And it also built trade connections with South America.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Got it. Okay, so this is sounding like rather a lot of work and coordination. Can you tell US more about how this network operated and kind of the various places involved in the cultivation, manufacturing and trading of it.
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Dr. Kim Embry
Sure, it's an interesting question. The Kirka network was actually quite complex and global, even though the scope remained relatively modest compared to opium, for example. But cultivation primarily stayed in its traditional regions, which were Peru and Bolivia at the time where the climate and altitude were ideal. And British attempts to grow coca elsewhere in the empire were not very successful at first. And because of that, the trade routes for coca were mostly transatlantic. Coca leaves were shipped from key Pacific ports like Callao or Muyendo in Peru, often traveling around Cape Horn to Britain. And Liverpool became the main entry point. Though interestingly, a lot of the coca that arrived there didn't stay in Britain. It was re exported, especially to Germany, which had a much bigger pharmaceutical industry. Particularly Merck in Darmstadt became the center for curcumin production after the alkaloid was isolated. And Britain, in contrast, was more involved in distribution trade of coca alone, sometimes importing processed cocaine rather than producing it in the home country. And what I find fascinating is that this wasn't just a trade network, it was a knowledge network. You had botanists, chemists, pharmacists and traders, and they were all interconnected, exchanging information and materials. And Kew Gardens as an institution therefore played a key role in coordinating this flow.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that's very interesting to understand. Kind of the, I suppose, brains of the operation being in one place, but then things happening in many other places as well. And obviously we've mentioned cocaine and obviously that comes from coca. But I think we probably want to talk a little bit more about the manufacturing from one to the other. So can you give us a bit more insight into kind of how that process is working and where that's being done and who's buying it?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Yes, sure. So in the 19th century, scientists and physicians were curious about active ingredients in plants and they continuously experimented with raw materials such as coca. The key breakthrough though, came in 1859 when the German chemist Albert Niemann successfully isolated curcumin as the plant's primary alkaluen. And that was a turning point because it allowed coca to move from a somewhat exotic into a pharmaceutical substance. Interestingly, cocaine didn't become immediately famous just because it was isolated, which we might assume today what really acted as a juggernaut was how it was used. In 1884, Karl Koller, also German, discovered in its effectiveness as a local anesthetic, especially in eye surgery. And suddenly cocaine became revolutionary in medical practice because it was safer and easier to administer than chloroform and ether, which were the common anesthetics at the time. And cocaine flashed like a meteor before the eyes of the medical world and as one journalist called it or wrote at the time. So from there, a whole network of chemists, physicians and pharmaceutical companies got involved. And cocaine was manufactured both in Europe and increasingly also in South America as crude cocaine or cocaine paste, before being shipped overseas for further processing.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's always really interesting to see how something goes from being kind of developed to then an entire sector.
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Dr. Kim Embry
Right.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Obviously in this case the medical community going, oh wait, right, that's clearly a really big transformation. What about the wider public, though? If one wasn't a doctor or a scientist, did they know anything about coca or cocaine at this point?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Yeah. So this is an interesting question as well, because you might think from a modern point of view, that they knew about everything that was going on with the coca and cocaine research, but it was a bit more complicated than that. For the most of the 19th century, the public knew little about coca and knowledge about the plant was really limited to scientific circles. And even there it was hidden, so to say, in travel accounts and specialized journals. And it only changed from about the 1870s onwards. Newspapers, magazines and advertisements played a huge role here. As literacy increased and print media became cheap and widely available, information about cocaine. Cocaine started circulating much more broadly. But what people learned was much influenced by marketing techniques. Products like coco, wine, tonics or pills were advertised as marvelous medicine, and they played with that exotic image as well. They were also promoted for everything from throat problems to fatigue and digestive issues. And because many of these ads highlighted prominent consumers, such as Pope Leo XIII and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, they carried a lot of authority. And at the same time, newspapers also reported on scientific developments like cocaine's use as an anesthetic, which added to its reputation as a medical breakthrough.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That all sounds like it's being advertised as kind of shiny and amazing and kind of all good things.
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Dr. Kim Embry
Absolutely, yes.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Was there any portrayal of coca or cocaine at this point? In a negative sense?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Yeah. But it only surfaced later with the development of the concept of addiction. So initially, cocaine, cocaine weren't seen as dangerous, at least not in the way we think of it today. In fact, for much of the 19th century, they were viewed quite positively, especially within medical and upper class circles. Cocoa in particular was seen as a beneficial substance, something invigorating, even healthy. And cocaine, after its introduction, was celebrated, as I already mentioned, as a medical breakthrough, especially because of its role as the first effective local anesthetic. And that being said, there were always critical voices quite at the beginning, but then continuously picking up. We've spoken about early reports, for example, by Popik, who portray coca as morally and physically harmful, particularly when associated with indigenous populations. But more importantly, as cocaine use expanded, especially with injections, concerns began to grow. Doctors started noticing accidental overdoses and the potential for addiction, which only slowly became acknowledged as an illness that required treatment. But yes, some medical professions professionals explicitly warned that cocaine could be dangerous and deadly if misused. And still these concerns didn't immediately give way for widespread public fear or regulation. Kirkin remained largely Accepted, sometimes fashionable until the early 20th century.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah. Okay, so what changes then, right? How do we get to the point where the general public is like, wait a second, maybe this is an issue. And crucially, given what you said earlier about the regulation in the early 1900s, how do politicians get involved in worrying about this?
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Dr. Kim Embry
What's interesting is that political concern about Kirkin came relatively late, and when it did, it kind of built up from several different directions at once. So at first there was not much urgency. Kirkin use was still limited, and compared to something like opium, it didn't seem like a major problem. But that started to change towards the end of the 19th century, especially when doctors began reporting side effects, overdoses and signs of addiction. And there was a big shift because Kirkin suddenly stopped looking like a miracle drug and started looking like a risk. Newspapers and social reform movements also picked up on this and portray Kirkin as a moral issue, something that could damage both individuals and society as a whole, and especially the upper, middle and other classes who were the prime consumers and at the same times model, at the same time models for proper Victorian etiquette. This is what helped push it into the political space spotlight, so to say. And another key factor was the British Empire, especially India, because there cocaine use was on the rise and officials were worried it might spread like the opium habit had earlier. And they also had a problem with morphine or morphium consumption in the same way. And this made the issue much more urgent. Finally, there was international pressure. Countries like the US were already pushing for stricter drug control, and Britain, as the empire that it was, didn't want to fall behind.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that's really interesting to hear about this transformation then going, as you said in the title of the book, right, from botanical curiosity to a drug that needs to be regulated. So we've covered a massive change in perspective that, as we mentioned earlier, kind of happens quite quickly. Are there any other key takeaways from the book that you want readers to be aware of?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Looking at it more broadly, so to say, I would be happy if readers finished the book and understand that many drug histories, not only that of coca, are embedded into your wider nexus. There are botanical, economic, pharmaceutical, socio, cultural and political circumstances that are interdependent and they influence the career of drugs. This also means that some drugs we know today might have experienced the same or a similar career path as I describe in the Career model of Vegetable Drugs at the end of my book. And I'm sure it will not be the last drug who faces the same fate. But I would hope that science, medicine and politics work in a better differentiation between the raw material and the isolated or purified product.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, of course, that's always something that's intriguing as historians, when we get to see kind of how lots of things are entangled, different kinds of knowledge and ways of communicating. You know, nothing's ever in isolation. So thank you for helping us understand this particular transformation. Is there anything you are currently working on then that you want to give us a sneak preview of? Obviously you've got teaching to be getting on with. Anything you want to share?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Not so much about drug histories, though.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Fair enough. It doesn't have to be. I mean, people have told me about their gardens. At this point in the conversation, is there anything you want to leave us with?
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Dr. Kim Embry
Sure. So I was just talking about drug history because I cannot make use of that, my research in school, teaching in that setting. But currently I'm working on a book on drug histories in early modernity for utb. And besides of coke and cocaine, I will also look at other drugs such as opium, cannabis, coffee, tea and tobacco. And it's designed for undergrads studying history, medicine, or related disciplines. And they are looking for an introductory overview of the history of these drugs. And other than that, I'm attending a few conferences and hope I can share some of my fascination for the history of coca with my audiences.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. And for any listeners who want to learn more, they can of course read the book we've been discussing titled Coca and the From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug 1835-1912, published by Transcript Publishing in 2025. Kim, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [25:02]
Dr. Kim Embry
Thank you very much for having me, Miranda.