Colorado Springs Gazette, January 4, 1897. The human hunger for altered states of consciousness is as old as thought itself, and back in 1897 cocaine still represented a cutting-edge designer drug, at least to those who hadn't read Sigmund Freud's Cocaine Papers (1884) in translation. There's an interesting ambivalence at work in this editorial item: It's equally persuasive as a call for interdiction and a despairing vote for libertarian laissez-faire.

Neither sulphuric ether or "chloral" (chloral hydrate) ever really took off as recreational drugs, probably because they were both general anesthetics that simply knocked you on your ass. Chloral hydrate was more popularly used as a "Mickey Finn," which was the Victorian version of "roofies." You put a drop or two in someone's drink and they were basically yours to do with as you wanted to for the rest of the evening.