Optical connections: Cocaine, Koller and Freud

A combination of a headstrong medical student, a physician with some eccentric (and possibly dangerous) ideas and a highly addictive new drug had the potential to be an explosive mixture. Vienna in the last quarter of the 19th century provided the backdrop to experiments with cocaine that were to transform the life of eventual ophthalmologist, Carl Koller, and nearly ruin the reputation of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

The cosmopolitan city of Vienna, the imperial capital of the Austrian Empire was, in the late 1880s, a ferment of ideas ranging across the arts and sciences. News of a new drug with interesting effects, including local anaesthesia, was swirling around. Reports of experiments with cocaine on animals were intriguing but their import was not yet appreciated. One such description runs as follows: