PRACTICAL USES OF COCAINE. 
269 
be impossible to enumerate all the cases in which this drug can 
advantageously be employed, but I believe, after consultation 
with many practitioners, that it should be brought into much 
more general use in our profession than it is at present. I think, 
also, that if we once become accustomed to using it, and learn 
how to properly use it, we will become more and more enthused 
with the results obtained. 
If I should make the statement here that I would rather be 
deprived of the use, in my practice, of any other one drug than 
this, some of my brother practitioners might be startled; so I 
won’t say so. But in all candor, I must say I do not know of 
any other one agent so applicable in such a variety of cases, 
and none other for which it would be so difficult to find a sub¬ 
stitute. By its use we have been able to discard the hobbles, 
operating table, and other means of physical resistance or con¬ 
finement, to a great extent, and perform what would otherwise 
be painful and difficult operations with ease and safety to our¬ 
selves and almost total unconsciousness of pain to our patients. 
And by so operating we gain for ourselves admiration and 
praise from our patrons for humane as well as scientific practice. 
In all operations to the eye—removing foreign objects, 
stitching up torn lids, or removing warts or tumors from the lids, 
after the application of cocaine the eye can be manipulated as 
easily and freely as any other part of the body. In the removal 
of warts and tumors two to five grains (depending upon the 
size of the tumor), dissolved in a little water, and injected at 
different points around the seat of operation with a hypodermic 
syringe, usually produces complete anaesthesia to the parts. In 
those cases care must be exercised that the injections are made 
outside of all abnormal tissue, else there will be so little absorp¬ 
tion that the drug will fail to exert its influence. A radius of 
more than two inches cannot be successfully anaesthized from a 
single puncture, except where it can be made over a nerve trunk, 
when all the tissues below the puncture, and receiving its nerve 
.supply from that particular trunk, will be influenced. 
I have removed tumors of three pounds weight with no 
