PHARMACOPCIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
The investigator had not enough cocaine to give completely its 
action on temperature and the glandular secretions, but adds that 
(p. 235) (55b), as compared with caffeine, theine, and so forth, “in 
every other respect cocaine had similar action,’ thus giving it no 
quality of its own (55b). 
Having reviewed the literature on coca (including Bennett’s physi- 
ological investigations on cocaine), Dowdeswell first obtained speci- 
mens of the drug, of unquestioned quality. He then interested in his 
work such authorities as Ringer (who furnished instruments of “per- 
fectly accurate results”) and the conspicuous Professor Murrell, of 
University College. The preparations employed were made by the well- 
known English chemist Mr. Garrard, referred to by Dowdeswell as 
follows: 
All of which were well prepared by Mr. Garrard, of University College 
Hospital, who has taken much interest in the subject, and who has also very 
successfully obtained the alkaloid and the volatile constituent of the leaf, and 
is still continuing an investigation of its pharmaceutical properties, for which 
his skillful preparations of other previously unknown alkaloids, as of jaborandi, 
eminently qualify him. 
The preparations made by Garrard were not only such as paralleled 
the products of the native users of coca, but also included others, sug- 
gested by his own chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge. The ex- 
perimentation considered, in detail, bodily conditions, rate of pulse, 
temperature, urine, urea excretion, etc., etc., as influenced by coca. 
Two detailed tables (p. 666) (196a), give the results, which, to the 
utter disparagement of coca, are summed up by Dowdeswell as follows: 
It has not affected the pupil nor the state of the skin: it has caused neither 
drowsiness nor sleeplessness; assuredly it has occasioned none of those sub- 
jective effects so fervidly described and abscribed to it by others—not the 
slightest excitement, nor even the feeling of buoyancy and exhilaration which 
is experienced from mountain air, or a draught of spring water. This examina- 
tion was commenced in the expectation that the drug would prove important and 
interesting physiologically, and perhaps valuable as a therapeutical agent. This 
expectation has been disappointed. Without asserting that it is positively inert, 
it is concluded from these experiments that its action is so slight as to preclude 
the idea of its having any value either therapeutically or popularly; and it is the 
belief of the writer, from observation upon the effect on the pulse, etc., of tea, 
milk-and-water, and even plain water, hot, tepid, and cold, that such things may, 
at slightly different temperatures, produce a more decided effect than even large 
doses of Coca, if taken at about the temperature of the body. 
The result of the investigations of these eminent authorities, in 
connection with the physiological experimentations wth cocaine, demon- 
strated to the satisfaction of the world of science and the professions 
that this drug was, at the very best, merely a something in the line of 
the caffeine-bearing stimulants, such as tea and coffee, and, next, that 
instead of being of any value whatever, or of possessing any inherent 
quality whatever, it was positively inert, having ( 196a ) 
an action so slight as to preclude the idea of its having any value, either 
therapeutically or popular; 
that it has no greater effect on the pulse than 
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