PHARMACOPGIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
tea, milk-and-water, or even plain water, hot, tepid, and cold; 
that it 
occasioned none of those subjective effects so fervidly described and 
ascribed 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. 
To this may be added the similar results obtained by Professor 
Roberts Bartholow, M. D,, to the effect that “it acts like theine and 
caffeine as an indirect nutrient,” etc. (Therapeutic Gazette, July, 1880, 
p. 280) (564). : ; 
Just at that time the American “New Remedy Craze” of the 70's 
was at its height. Among the substances eulogized was coca, which 
had received thereby a position in the Prices Current of all the Ameri- 
can manufacturing pharmaceutical establishments, as well as the eulo- 
gistic commendations of physicians in American medical prints. 
Paralyzing to such as these were the adverse “authoritative” re- 
ports concerning the worthlessness and inertness of the drug (196a). 
All this, together with the variations in the quality of the commercial 
article (such variations in quality being confirmed later by Professor 
H. H. Rusby, M.D.), very much disturbed the talented, careful, and 
exceptionally conscientious chemist, the leading American manufactur- 
ing pharmacist of that date, Dr. Edward R. Squibb, of Brooklyn, N. Y. 
In the height of the commercial demand for coca he determined to sac- 
rifice his commercial opportunities to his professional ideals, and to 
accept the provings of “scientific authority,” by excluding all coca 
preparations from his pharmaceutical list, commending tea and coffee 
in their stead. He writes as follows in his Ephemeris ( 610a), July, 
1884: 
Almost every purchase (of the crude drug.—L.) has been made on mental 
protest, and he (Squibb) has been ashamed of every pound of the fluid extract 
sent out, from the knowledge that it was of poor quality; and there seems to 
be no more prospect of a supply of a better quality than there was this time last 
year, because so long as an inferior quality sells in such enormous quantities at 
good prices, the demands of trade are satisfied. 
Under this condition of the markets, the writer has finally decided to give 
up making a fluid extract of Coca, and has left it off his list, adopting a fluid 
extract of tea instead, as a superior substitute, for those who may choose to 
use it, and regrets that this course was not taken a year ago. 
Dr. Squibb, however, with even more than his usual carefulness 
and desire to extend professional courtesy to one and all, perhaps guided 
also by a latent questioning of the possibility of paralleling the action 
of a drug in abnormal conditions of the human being by a study of the 
action of that drug on the lower animals or even on a man in health, 
refers to the fact that “authorities are often in error or opposed in opin- 
ion,” fortifying this statement in the following words: 
Conflicting and contradictory testimony from competent authority is not 
uncommon in therapeutics, and the reasons for it are well recognized in the im- 
possibility of an equality in the conditions and circumstances of the investi- 
aioe, and hence the general decision commonly reached, is upon the principles 
of averages. 
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