Abe Lincoln a cokehead?

[Major Loss]

Cokehead ... or bedhead?
For 60 years, scholars have used a drugstore ledger to claim Abe Lincoln
bought cocaine. Now a closer reading of the record has sniffed out the
real dope.

By Tara Mcclellan Mcandrew
a Springfield- based freelance writer
Published February 11, 2007


Abraham Lincoln must have been tired.

It was October 1860, one month before his first presidential election.
Between keeping up with the campaign, his busy Springfield law practice
and his trio of mischievous boys, he probably needed a boost.

Did Lincoln reach for a little cocaine?

Sixty years worth of respected historical sources say he did, and the
evidence, they argue, is right there in black and white.

Lincoln's alleged cocaine purchase was originally reported in "The
Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln," an oft-cited book by Harry E.
Pratt that was published in 1943 by the Abraham Lincoln Association. In
the course of analyzing Lincoln's finances, Pratt, a noted Lincoln
scholar and former Illinois State Historian, lists credit purchases the
Lincoln family made at Corneau and Diller's, a drugstore in downtown
Springfield that was popular at the time. According to Pratt, an entry
in the store's ledger for Oct. 12, 1860 says the Lincoln family
purchased 50 cents worth of "cocaine," among other items.

Today, a revelation like that could wreck a political career. But in the
19th Century, cocaine was legal.

"Initially, there were no laws restricting the consumption or sale of
cocaine. In fact, cocaine was freely available in drugstores, saloons,
from mail-order vendors and even in grocery stores," wrote Dr. Gopal
Das, of the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Fargo, in an
April 1993 Journal of Clinical Pharmacology article entitled "Cocaine
Abuse in North America: a Milestone in History."

Drugstores back then offered a cornucopia of now illegal or controlled
substances. The same Corneau and Diller's ledger that cites Lincoln's
alleged cocaine purchase lists other customers buying morphine,
laudanum, chloroform, quinine, opium pills, mercury, and belladonna
(from the deadly nightshade plant). And that was for only three months.

Clearly, central Illinoisans were well-medicated.

Recently, author Joshua Wolf Shenk theorized that Lincoln took cocaine
for depression. Shenk's book, "Lincoln's Melancholy" (Houghton Mifflin
Co., 2005), argues that Lincoln's chronic funks gave him the tools he
needed to be an effective chief executive during a difficult era.

It says Lincoln tried treating his own depression with a variety of
medicines, including "fifty cents' worth of cocaine" from Corneau and
Diller's.

Shenk reiterated the cocaine assertion in a feature he wrote about
Lincoln's battles with depression in the September 2005 Atlantic Monthly
magazine.

He isn't alone in analyzing Lincoln's self-medicating practices. In
2001, in the summer issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Dr.
Norbert Hirschhorn of Yale University, the late Dr. Robert G. Feldman of
Boston University, and Ian A. Greaves of the University of Minnesota
presented their theory that Lincoln contracted mercury poisoning from
taking too many "blue mass pills," which contained the toxic metal. They
invoked the thesis to account for a run of uncharacteristically
aggressive behavior shown by Lincoln during the 1850s. Blue mass pills
were often prescribed in those days for melancholy and other maladies,
and Lincoln is widely known to have taken them.

Since Lincoln took mercury pills to ease his blues, it's not a far
stretch to think he used cocaine and other medicines to help, too. After
all, Lincoln's depression was quite severe at times, according to
several of his friends and colleagues, and even Lincoln himself.

Among other respected media that have cited Lincoln's alleged cocaine
use, based on Harry Pratt's original disclosure, are The Lincoln Log, an
online chronology of Lincoln's daily activities, which is overseen by
the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum; and the Web site of the National Park
Service, which oversees the Lincoln Home.

There's just one problem: For all his scholarship, Harry Pratt was
wrong.

It's right there in the drugstore's original ledgers, which are fragile,
old volumes painstakingly wrapped and stored at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library in Springfield.

In flowery handwriting, the ledger attributes several credit purchases
to the family of "Abraham Lincoln" on Oct. 12, 1860, including one for
"cocoaine." Two other Springfield residents also bought "cocoaine" that
year, according to the record.

Of course, many words were spelled differently 150 years ago, a fact
that has caused problems periodically with historical interpretation.
For instance, the same ledgers misspell "cigars" as "segars." Pratt must
have taken this into account in assuming that the ledger's "cocoaine"
notation meant Lincoln bought cocaine.

But it's not very likely, says drug historian Dr. David Musto.

Musto, who has written four books about the history of drug regulation,
is a Yale Medical School faculty member and a former White House adviser
on drug policy.

"It's virtually impossible that Lincoln purchased cocaine in 1860," he
says. "Cocaine wasn't even isolated from coca leaves until 1860 by a
scientist named Albert Niemann in Germany."

Niemann experimented with 60 pounds of coca leaves until he found a way
to isolate the cocaine, according to Steven Karch's "A Brief History of
Cocaine" (CRC Press, 1997).

Given the slow pace of transportation, communications and production
back then, says Musto, it's hard to imagine that companies could have
produced commercial amounts of cocaine the same year it was isolated.

But there was no demand for the stuff anyway. In fact, nobody paid much
attention to Niemann's cocaine discovery. "Ten years went by before
anyone even bothered to confirm his observation that cocaine crystals
made the tongue numb. . . ," according to Karch.

The pharmaceutical company Merck did make about a quarter of a pound of
cocaine in 1862, but then production lagged. "Merck produced only a
small amount of cocaine annually until the explosion in use in 1884,"
Musto says.

But that was long past Lincoln's lifetime. So, if Lincoln didn't buy
cocaine, what did he buy?

Hair tonic, it turns out--a boost for his follicles, not his neurons.
Perhaps Honest Abe had a vain streak we didn't know about.

"Cocoaine," a short investigation has disclosed, was a remedy for
dandruff and baldness in the latter 1800s and went by the brand name
Burnett's Cocoaine.

It was made by Joseph Burnett in Boston from the oil of cocoanuts (an
alternative spelling of coconuts), hence its drug-like name. The Jan.
23, 1862, Chicago Daily Tribune even advertised "cocoaine soap" for
chapped hands.

Burnett's hair tonic was popular nationwide. "I have used the contents
of one bottle, and my bald pate is covered all over with young hair,
about three-eighths of an inch long, which appears strong and healthy,
and determined to grow," said a customer testimonial in a Nov. 21, 1863,
Harper's Weekly ad.

Did Corneau and Diller's sell the product at the time of Lincoln's
purchase?

The answer is in a front-page ad in the Springfield paper, the Illinois
State Register, on Oct. 11, 1860, the day before Lincoln's purchase. It
says:



"Cocoaine--Burnett's, for the hair

At Corneau & Diller"



The hair tonic must have been in demand, because another Springfield
store also advertised it.

So, all evidence shows that Lincoln didn't buy cocaine; he bought hair
tonic. After all, he often commented on his unruly hair.

Our soon-to-be 16th president wasn't looking for a pick-me-up. He just
wanted to look good. Who can blame a presidential candidate for that?

[D-Day_Dodger]

A fascinating read. I've always been a big fan of Honest Abe. The best American president by a long shot in my opinion. But back to the cocaine thing. I wonder, if the stuff had been available back then, whether he would have used it. I think being married to Mary Lincoln would have been more than enough of an excuse to want to dabble in the white powder.