COCA 99 



ment of the pupil. Operations upon the conjunctiva 

 and cornea ordinarily requiring the use of chloroform 

 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 

 conjunct! val surface being insensible to repeated pinch- 

 ings 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 noted that in the beginning cocaine was 

 commended in operations on the cornea of the eye, its 

 latest application in minor operations in surgery, den- 

 tistry, and elsewhere, being at that time not even 

 theoretically anticipated. 



With a spirit that can not be too highly commended, 

 Dr. Squibb, accepting the facts of the present, now 

 threw all his efforts into a new investigation of coca 

 and its now famous alkaloid, with such success that his 

 process of manufacture of cocaine is yet a standard, 

 and his writings on this alkaloid yet authority. Occu- 

 pying many pages of his Ephem.eris, 1884-5, they stand 

 as a lasting memorial to the lofty methods of this ex- 

 ceptionally fair man, who took pleasure in publicly 

 correcting an error, and whose every record in American 

 pharmacy is monumental. 



The discovery of the anesthetic qualities of coca 

 marked the beginning of an epoch in medication 

 whose story, in connection with the past, pleads 

 irresistibly for tolerance of thought and action 



