Coca

a shrub growing in Peru and Bolivia. The leaves, sprinkled with lime, are chewed by 10,000,000 Indians of these countries and adjacent parts of Brazil. Coca lessens the pangs of hunger, dilates the pupil of the eye, and gives immediate quickness of step. Mountain climbers claim that it prevents shortness of breath. In some respects the qualities of the leaf resemble those of opium. Its extensive use is parallel to that of opium, betel, and tobacco by other people. Cocaine, a powerful drug obtained from the leaves, is well known to medical science. It is administered to lessen pain and is injected by surgeons to produce local numbness during an operation. See Tobacco; Betel