In the late 1800's early 1900's two of cocaine's biggest advocates were Dr. Sigmund Freud and Dr. Karl Koller.  Freud, a Psychologist and Koller, a house surgeon practicing in the Veinna General Hospital were friends and associates. Up until the mid 1880's both had very little notoriety in thier respective fields.  Their climb to fame and fortune began in 1885 after chemists from two major drug companies of the day, the Merck Drug Company and Park Davis and Company figured out how to synthethize coca leaves into pure cocaine.  Once they accomplished this the race was on and both companies entered into a fierce competition to create and capture  the  market for pure cocaine.   Enter Sigmund Freud. 

Park Davis used a popular American publication at the time to adverstise the wonders of cocaine and other drugs manufactured by the company called the  Theraputic Gazette.  It was from an ad placed in this publication that glorified cocaine and its use in curing morophine addiction that Sigmund Freud quoted from and used in his now famous medical paper on cocaine.  The paper gained popularity among fellow physicans and was published in medical journals of the day.  As it turned out Park Davis actually owned the Gazzette and created the publication soly to market thier products.  After Freud's cocaine paper was published the Park Davis company hired Freud to endorse it's brand of cocaine over  Merck's.  Enter Pionerring Opthalmologist, Dr. Karl Koller.

The Merck  Drug company retaliated by contacting Dr. Karl Koller, who had done some limited  and unsuccessful expermentation with coca leaves soaked in alcohol as an anaesthetic used in eye surgery.  With  the Merck Drug Companies help, Dr. Koller discovered that the pure cocaine actually worked well as a local anaesthetic during eye surgery and wrote his findings in a medical paper giving great accolades to the new and improved pure cocaine's anaesthetic qualities.  It wasn't too long after Koller's cocaine paper was published that the  Merck Drug Company put Koller on their payroll to promote their brand of cocaine over Park, Davis' cocaine.

In actual fact neither Freud nor Koller could have achieved fame, or even notoriety, if the chemists at Merck and Park, Davis had not mastered the chemistry of commercial cocaine production.   These two practioners remained "authorities" on the uses of cocaine from 1885 up until 1906.  Whether Freud or Koller intended to or not they became two of the most influential mouth pieces for the popularization of cocaine ever.  With Merck and Park, Davis's ability to the mass produce purified cocaine and the influential sales pitches from Freud and Koller the drug was launched into the world's conciousness and its place of prominence as one of the most dangerous and abused drugs the planet has ever known.