PHARMACOPCIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
And yet, the investigations of Dowdeswell seeming incontrovert- 
ible, Dr. Squibb adds as follows: 
But there has been no observer on either side whose researches have been 
anything like so thorough, so extended or so accurate as those of Mr. Dow- 
deswell. Indeed, no other account has been met with, wherein the modern 
methods of precision have been applied to the question at all; the other testi- 
mony being all rather loose and indefinite, often at second or third hands, or 
from the narratives of more or less enthusiastic travelers. But if Mr. Dow- 
deswell’s results be accepted as being conclusive, the annual consumption of 
40,000,000 pounds of Coca, at a cost of $10,000,000, promotes this substance to 
take rank among the large economic blunders of the age. 
Now came the “irony of fate!” Scarcely had the ink dried in 
the publication (Ephemeris) aforenamed, recording Dr, Squibb’s faith 
fore it was announced in a letter to Dr. Squibb, dated September 19, 
1884, from Dr. Henry D. Noyes, a physician of New York then in 
in the results of the investigations of Bennett and of Dowdeswell, be- 
Kreuznach, Germany (Ephemeris, Nov., 1884, p. 685), that a medical 
student named Koller, of Vienna, had discovered that a solution of 
hydrochlorate of cocaine was possessed of marvelous qualities as a local 
anesthetic. 
- This letter of Dr. Noyes was immediately given a setting, or ref- 
erence was made thereto, in every pharmaceutical and medical journal 
of America. Such an authority as Dr. D. Agnew, of Philadelphia, 
wrote as follows in the Medical Record, October 18, 1884: 
We have to-day (Oct. 18, 1884), used the agent in our clinic at the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, with most astonishing and satisfactory results. 
If further use should prove to be equally satisfactory, we will be in possession 
of an agent for the prevention of suffering in opthalmic operations of inesti- 
mable value. 
Came also leading editorials in the various publications on medicine 
and pharmacy, of which that from the pen of the then editor of the 
Druggists’ Circular, Mr. Henry B. Parsons, brother of the present 
editor of the Practical Druggist, is typical. From it we quote as fol- 
lows: 
For the past month American medical journals have fairly bristled with 
reports from various hospital surgeons, and it is pleasing to note that, on the 
whole, the claims first made for this remedy have been sustained. It seems to 
be proved that, in the majority of cases, the application to the eye of a few 
drops of a 2 or 4 per cent solution of this salt will produce a more or less com- 
plete, but transient, insensibility to pain, with enlargement of the pupil. Oper- 
ations upon the conjunctiva and cornea ordinarily requiring the use of chloro- 
form or ether have been performed upon patients conscious of everything 
being done, but saved from pain by the application of a weak aqueous solution 
of this salt. In several operations for removal of hard cataract, the patients 
complained of no pain whatever, the entire conjunctival surface being insen- 
sible to repeated pinchings with the surgeon’s forceps. The only sensation 
described was that of “numbness and hardness.” After a time the eye returns 
to its normal sensitiveness, and there seems to be no troublesome local after- 
effects. 
Let it be observed that in the beginning cocaine was commended 
in operations on the cornea of the eye, its latest application in minor 
operations in surgery, dentistry, and elsewhere being at that time not 
even a theoretical possibility. 
Turning his face to the future, and accepting the facts of the pres- 
23 
