COCA 97 



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 question- 

 ing 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 on a 

 man in health, refers to the fact that "authorities are 

 often in error or opposed in opinion," fortifying this 

 statement in the following words (610a) : 



"Conflicting and contradictory testimony from com- 

 petent authority is not uncommon in therapeutics, 

 and the reasons for it are well recognized in the impossi- 

 bility of an equality in the conditions and circumstances 

 of the investigations, and hence the general decision 

 commonly reached is upon the principles of averages." 



And yet the physiological investigations of Dowdes- 

 well seeming to be incontrovertible, Dr. Squibb adds: 



"But there has been no observer on either side whose 

 researches have been anything like so thorough, so ex- 

 tended, or so accurate as those of Mr. Dowdeswell. 

 Indeed, no other account has been met with wherein 

 the modern methods of precision have been applied to 

 the question at all ; the other testimony being all rather 

 loose and indefinite, often at second or third hands, or 

 from the narratives of more or less enthusiastic trav- 

 elers. But if Mr. Dowdeswell'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 blun- 

 ders of the age." 



Now came the "irony of fate!" Scarcely had the ink 



