A brief history of cocaine 1880 1930 a fter observations concerning the cultivation the trade and the use of coca by the peruvian population several spanish physicians among whom monardes had already in the xvith century proposed to use this plant as a medicine. The use of cocaine as a local anesthetic is itself an interesting story it was none other than the young sigmund freud who developed a strong interest in the drug early in his career. Cocaine was first isolated extracted from coca leaves in 1859 by german chemist albert niemann it was not until the 1880s that it started to be popularized in the medical community austrian psychoanalyst sigmund freud