Coca-leaf habituation has affected millions of Andean natives for over 400 years. In the last half-century it has also involved millions more Malayans. Coca leaf, from which cocaine and extracts for some commercial carbonated soft drinks are obtained, remains relatively unknown by the medical and allied professions elsewhere. A review of the original medical, historical and other pertinent literature of the last 350 years illustrates the origins of the use of coca leaf, its spread, the isolation of cocaine and its first uses, as well as some of the euphoric and other effects of both substances.
According to Malinowski there are no peoples, however primitive, without religion and magic; nor are there any societies lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science (Blumberg 1963). Magic and taboo are resorted to when through the normal use of science, or rational techniques, man is unable to control unpredictable events important to him. Where there is difficulty in predicting the outcome of behaviour, where the results of action are not consonant with effort, where there are great limitions on man's knowledge of vital issues, magical techniques are employed--in short, where circumstances of life are uncertain, uncontrolled and unknown. Magic and animism are systems of thought which give not only the explanation of a single phenomenon, but make it possible to comprehend the totality of the world from one point, as a continuity. Of the three systems of thought--animistic, religious and scientific--animism is perhaps the most consistent and the most exhaustive, the one which explains the world in its entirety.