Coca leaves have psychoactive and therapeutic propertiesFabiano Sodi/Alamy
The mummified brain tissue of two people found in a 17th-century crypt in Milan, Italy, contains traces of cocaine, revealing that the drug was being used in Europe 200 years earlier than previously recorded.
Coca leaves, from which cocaine is derived, have been chewed in the plant’s native South America for thousands of years, but the drug only took off in Europe in the 19th century, when it was chemically isolated from the plant.
Spanish conquerors learned of the psychoactive and therapeutic properties of coca leaves, but…