There is here a very significant difference between the use of 
dried and entire coca leaves with an alkaline admixture in the 
highlands and the powdered product in the lowlands. In the 
highlands, the quid cannot be totally swallowed, but, in the 
lowland method of taking coca powder, most and occasionally 
all of the powder passes to the stomach. A recent study has 
shown how many nutritionally valuable elements are supplied 
by coca in the Andes. Since highland coca users eventually eject 
the quid from the mouth, the nutritionally valuable elements in 
the coca-alkaline preparation must be more available in a 
method of use in which the total leaf-alkaline preparation can 
pass through the whole alimentary canal. Unfortunately, nutri- 
tional studies parallel to those done for the highland use of coca 
leaves have not been carried out in the Amazon, but I have been 
convinced for many years that the use of coca as it is carried on 
in the Amazon plays a vital role in human nutrition. This aspect 
of Erythroxylon studies is in urgent need of investigation. 
Coca powder has an initial bitter taste which puckers up the 
mouth. The first noticeable effect is a slight anaesthetizing of the 
tongue and mouth; this is followed by a general stimulation. Its 
value in some of the energetic dance festivals of the numerous 
tribes, requiring the expenditure of enormous amounts of 
energy, is obviously important. Furthermore, this stimulating 
effect makes its use, often in place of food, on long hunting or 
canoe trips away from the home maloca of the greatest physical 
help. The stimulation and capacity for performance and endu- 
rance which coca affords the individual and its ability to 
suppress hunger pangs gives the drug the role of an indispensible 
vade-me-cum in the more or less itinerant life of deprivation 
which many Indians of the northwest Amazon must undergo. 
The use of coca is frequently referred to as “coca-chewing.” 
No chewing is, however, ever involved in the northwest Ama- 
zon. The greyish green coca-ash powder is merely conveniently 
placed with the tongue, once the powder is wetted, between the 
cheek and the gums and slowly allowed to trickle down the 
esophagus. There is no word for this operation in English: the 
nearest, | presume, would be “to chew.” Yet in South American 
Spanish, appropriate words exist: the verb masticar is never 
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