90 PHARMACOPEIA!, DRUGS 



their houses. To our eyes, this smoke was unbearably 

 irritating." See Coca, "The Divine Plant of the In- 

 cas," by John Uri Lloyd. 



Notwithstanding all this evidence, fortified by re- 

 peated experiences of travelers, the world of scientific 

 medicine ignored, or even ridiculed, the use of the drug 

 until its introduction in England in the latter part of 

 the last century (about 1870) forced those concerned in 

 authoritative medicine to give it some recognition. 

 Numerous experimentations on its composition had 

 been made, in 1850, by Dr. Weddell and others, who 

 (both before and after that date) tried vainly to dis- 

 cover an energetic constituent of the drug. It was at 

 first believed that the leaves owed their inherent qual- 

 ities (if they had any, which was questioned), to some 

 volatile principle, a supposition that proved a fallacy, 

 other than in the discovery of the volatile base named 

 by them hydrine, which did not at all represent coca, 

 and which is no longer mentioned. However, the per- 

 sistent reports concerning the beneficial use of coca, and 

 its reputed powers as an empirical substance that was 

 creeping into the use of practicing physicians, led such 

 chemists as Hesse, Niemann, Stanislas, Martin, Maisch, 

 Lossin, Woehler, and many others, to repeated chemical 

 examinations of the drug and its qualities, resulting in a 

 number of products, such as coca-wax, coca-tannic acid, 

 and even of several alkaloidal bases, including one 

 named cocaine, this alkaloid being described in 1860 by 

 Niemann, an assistant of Professor Woehler, of Got- 

 tingen, Germany. But previously (1855), Gardeke had 

 given the name erythroxyline to the crystalline alkaloid 

 he had obtained. Cocaine is not, therefore, a recent 

 discovery. 



