![]() A great number of cocaine enthusiasts, including scientists and medical practitioners, wrote letters, pamphlets and essays about the miraculous properties of the 'divine drug' which excited human imagination and seemed to be a panacea for many ailments, from toothache to hysteria, labour pains, hay fever, and melancholy. The first wave of cocaine use occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century (1860-1905). Apart from drugs, Holmes was also a compulsive smoker and an avid drinker of good alcohols, but never in excess. Firstly, he believed that he needed stimulation for his 'overactive' brain in periods when he did not have interesting cases to solve, and secondly, he did not understand, like most Victorians, the side effects of drug use. Holmes's recreational use of drugs can be explained in two ways. ![]() Victorian users took these dangerous drugs as self-medication and as recreation. Sherlock Holmes, the most famous consulting detective in literature, used occasionally cocaine and morphine to escape, as he said, from “the dull routine of existence.” This was nothing unusual in Victorian times because sale of opium, laudanum, cocaine and morphine was legal. “The Adventure of the Yellow Face” Introduction ![]() Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices. ![]()
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