'Unprecedented' discovery: 17th-century mummy brains show evidence of cocaine use

Pigeons took posses of Duomo square in Milan, Italy, Sunday, March 15, 2020. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)

Preserved brain samples dating back to early 17th-century Milan have tested positive for cocaine, a team of Italian researchers has found, but it's not immediately clear how it got into their systems.

The new study from the University of Milan sheds light on the historical spread of the highly addictive drug, previously understood to have emerged in Europe as recently as the 1800s, and famously both used and promoted by prominent figures including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. But as the August study's findings show, Freud may have been rather behind the times, by as much as nearly 200 years.

It would appear there's a pair of Baroque-era Italian mummies with some explaining to do.

Researchers ran a battery of toxicological tests on specimens recovered from the Ospedale Maggiore, a Milanese hospital and church that operated throughout the 1600s and maintained extensive burial chambers, known as the Ca'Granda crypt.

"This represents an exceptional context from an archaeological, historical, and even toxicological point of view," the study reads. "It is estimated that these chambers contain approximately 2.9 million bones, which represent over 10,000 individuals who perished in the late Renaissance and Modern hospital."

Among the human remains interred in the complex's crypt, scientists examined nine brain samples, and in two of those nine samples, test results showed the presence of cocaine and some of its chemically related substances — a bewildering discovery, as none of the hospital's original records from the time mention the drug or its use.

"Given that the plant was not listed inside the detailed hospital pharmacopeia, it may not have been given as a medicinal remedy but may have been used for other purposes," the study reads.

"The presence of this plant in European human remains is unprecedented."

Colonial cartels

Cocaine draws it origin from the leaf of the Erythroxylum coca plant, a bush native to South America. For millennia, humans have used the plant for a variety of medicinal and religious purposes, including by chewing the leaves in a mixture with lime and roasted shells.

Societies including the Inca Empire, and later Spanish colonialists, controlled the flow of coca crops for their effect on the body, described in the University of Milan study as holding "the power to take away hunger and thirst, produced exhilarating effects, could be used as medicine … and induced a sense of well-being."

But while the plant was recognized for its potent and lucrative qualities, researchers note that early coca exports across the Atlantic were extremely limited. At the time, Spain maintained a tight lid on information from the so-called "New World," making it near impossible for demand to spread in Europe. Moreover, shipments of fresh coca largely failed to survive the transatlantic journey, the study notes.

It wouldn't be until the 19th century that modern forms of cocaine — hydrochloride salts chemically synthesized from coca plants — would emerge in medicine, and later recreational abuse.

In the modern drug epidemic, cocaine, amphetamines or other stimulants were involved in roughly half of all accidental deaths from opioid toxicity in Canada between 2020 and 2021, federal data shows, and a United Nations report from last year estimates that roughly half a million prior-year cocaine users reside in Canada.

But with two Italian brain samples showing signs of cocaine exposure a century or more before the drug's widespread adoption in Europe, the story may prove more complicated than it once appeared.

Archaeo-toxicology

Besides what the study authors describe as disputed reports of cocaine in ancient Egyptian mummies, the Milanese cadavers represent the oldest known users of coca products outside of the Americas, where the plants have long been endemic.

The researchers took pains to ensure there weren't interfering factors. The brain samples were handled in protected conditions or in their original crypt, which had been sealed since before modern times — safeguarding against environmental contamination.

Further, detailed analysis of the samples showed trace amounts of hygrine, a substance associated with coca leaf use, but not modern cocaine salts — consistent with the researchers' timeline.

Near as they can tell from the data, it would appear that the two Ospedale Maggiore patients had consumed the drug through chewing leaves or drinking a coca-leaf tea, likely in a single instance, and shortly before their deaths.

As for why they'd consumed it, there are only educated guesses. The hospital's pharmacy archives don't note the introduction of cocaine until the late 1800s, casting doubt on the idea that it was provided as a form of medicine.

That said, the duchy of Milan was under Spanish rule during much of that period, and as a key coastal trade outlet, the city would have seen shipments from across the Atlantic, potentially including what historical accounts of the time describe as "exotic" plants.

According to the researchers' findings, available clues point to either recreational use, or as a productivity enhancer, just as the Spanish colonists used it in New-World mines and plantations, and as in much of modern cocaine abuse.

"Whether coca leaves were used for recreational purposes, or rather for their reinforcing properties helpful for the population in their hard everyday life," the study concludes, "is a topic that requires further debate.