This exceptionally rare doctoral thesis is widely considered to be the first ever study on the physical effects of cocaine. It was published less than a decade after cocaine was first created (1860). The research was conducted by Thomas Moréno y Maïz (dates unknown), a Peruvian surgeon who went to Paris for post-graduate training. His pioneering thesis has been well-studied. Nevertheless, there are very few copies of it in either libraries or on the market.
The thesis is divided in two parts. The first discusses both the medical and chemical properties of the coca plant, specifically Erythroxylum coca or Amazonian coca, which is native to Peru and Bolivia. The second part discusses cocaine. Moréno y Maïz injected rats, guinea pigs, and frogs with the drug and conducted various experiments on them to see the effects. He discovered that the injected body parts quickly became paralysed, after which the animals showed no response to painful stimuli anymore. This led him to suggest that cocaine could potentially be used as a local anaesthetic. Further research by other doctors at the end of the 19th century confirmed Moréno y Maïz' hypothesis, but due to the potential harmful effects of cocaine, it was never widely used for this purpose.
With the black library stamp of the renewed faculté de médecine of the (Imperial) University of France in Paris on the title-page. The title-page is very slightly foxed, but the work is otherwise in very good condition. WorldCat 614184750 (3 copies in 2 libraries); cf. Marret, E. et all, Moreno y Maïz: A missed rendezvous with local anesthesia. In: Anesthesiology, vol. 100, 2004, pp. 1321-1322.