Cocaine is still used medicinally as a local anesthetic and vasoconstrictor in Europe. In the United States cocaine was once used to treat sinusitis, hay fever, depression, chronic fatigue and for appetite suppression. It has not been used as medicine in the U.S. since 1914.

Cocaine has little medical use. Because of its anesthetic effect, it was used for eye surgery. But because of its profound ability to vasoconstrict blood vessels (that is, make veins and arteries narrow, thus stopping bleeding), it can lead to scarring and delayed healing of the cornea. It is still available for use in the nose for surgery, stopping nosebleeds, and as a local anesthetic for cuts in children.

It had use in dentistry. If someone had a toothache, they would rub cocaine (or coca leaves) on their gums as a topical anesthetic.

For thousands of years, inhabitants of the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands and the western Amazon region have been mixing coca leaves with ash or lime, putting the wad in a cheek, and letting the juice trickle into their stomachs. In many parts of the Amazon and the Andes today, coca is the everyday stimulant drug, used more or less as coffee, tea, chewing tobacco, and khat are used in other areas of the world. In one study of a mountain village in Peru, coca was found to be the standard remedy for symptoms of hunger and cold and for two folk illnesses: el soka, a condition of weakness, fatigue, and general malaise; and el fiero, a chronic wasting illness. Coca was also the treatment of choice for stomach upset and stomachache and for colic, or severe gastrointestinal distress including diarrhea, cramps, and nausea. In the form of leaf powder or tea, coca is taken for toothache, ulcers, rheumatism, asthma, and even malaria. Coca tea is often served to tourists arriving in hotels and inns in the high Andes as a remedy for the nausea, dizziness, and headache of soroche (altitude sickness). Unlike other stimulants, coca is also a local anesthetic. The juice of the leaf can be applied to soothe eye irritations or gargled for hoarseness and sore throat. Coca leaves are also used as a topical anesthetic for mouth sores. Coca contains minerals, vitamin C, and some B vitamins, and it is sometimes said to be an important source of these nutrients in the Andean diet. n the medical use of coca and cocaine, it is hard to separate the central stimulant from the digestive, respiratory, and local anesthetic effects. A singer or actor who drank Mariani's wine could hardly know how much of the improvement he or she noticed was caused by local anesthesia or constriction of blood vessels in the throat and how much by euphoria and a feeling of mastery. As for stomach and intestinal problems, the gastrointestinal system is probably the most common site of psychosomatic symptoms. The use of coca or cocaine in convalescence from long-lasting debilitating diseases represents a similar combination of central and peripheral effects. Today cocaine is used in medicine mainly as a topical anesthetic in eye, ear, nose, and throat surgery and fiber tube optical examinations of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts. It has a combination of properties that cannot be duplicated by any of the synthetic local anesthetics: intense constriction of blood vessels (important whenever bleeding must be prevented), long duration of anesthesia (one hour), and low toxicity. Cocaine is no longer used in infiltration anesthesia (subcutaneous injection), in nerve block anesthesia, or in spinal anesthesia. Recently topical application of cocaine to the upper palate has been recommended as a way of aborting the severe pain of cluster headaches. Other medical uses are rare. Cocaine is an ingredient in Brompton's mixture, a preparation used in Great Britain for treating the chronic pain of terminal cancer, but controlled studies at a hospice in England have suggested that the cocaine in this drink provides no advantage over morphine alone." Cocaine was never tested seriously as a treatment for severe depression, but this idea is unlikely to be revived because the pharmacologically similar amphetamines have proved a failure for that purpose. Today substitutes have been found for most therapeutic uses of cocaine, and in most cases its dangers are believed to outweigh its potential benefits. Despite the recent and so far uncertain signs of reviving interest, coca and cocaine will never again be so widely used in medicine as they once were.

Nose surgery. this was 10 years ago and may not be legal today. Deaden the lining of the nose.