THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
OCTOBER,  1885. 
NOTES  ON  THE  ALKALOIDS  OF  COCA  LEAVES. 
By  a.  B.  Lyons,  M.D. 
A  year  ago  there  were  probably  not  a  dozen  places  in  the  United 
States  where  cocaine  could  have  been  bought,  and,  except  in  an  experi- 
mental way,  not  a  grain  of  the  alkaloid  had  been  manufactured  in  this 
country.  To-day  there  is  not  a  second-rate  drug  store  in  any  one  of 
our  cities  which  does  not  keep  on  hand  a  small  supply  of  the  article, 
and  manufacturers  have  been  obliged  again  and  again  to  increase  their 
capacity  to  produce  it,  so  active  has  been  the  demand. 
As  long  as  the  alkaloid  was  only  to  be  found  in  collections  of  rare 
chemicals,  or  as  an  item  in  the  long  list  of  articles  which  for  the  sake 
of  completeness  the  largest  dealers  in  chemical  specialties  were  obliged 
to  have  in  stock,  no  especial  interest  attached  to  this  particular  alka- 
loid, and  accordingly  we  find  most  of  the  text-books  entirely  silent 
with  regard  to  its  properties ;  many  of  them  do  not  even  mention  its 
existence. 
Now  that  it  has  come  into  every  day  use,  however,  it  is  important 
that  its  chemical  reactions  should  be  as  well  known  as  those  of  quinine 
or  caffeine,  since  it  is  now  liable  to  come  under  observation  in  medico- 
legal investigations.  It  is  also  desirable  that  the  physical  properties  of 
the  cocaine  salts  should  be  familiar,  so  that  purchasers  may  be  on  their 
guard  against  substitutions  or  adulterations. 
There  is  yet  much  to  be  learned  in  regard  to  the  alkaloids  of  coca 
leaves.  It  is  not  improbable  that  there  may  be  several  distinct  alka- 
loids which  have  not  yet  been  described.  It  is  very  certain  that  much 
of  the  cocaine  in  the  market  is  a  mixture  of  several  apparently  dis- 
tinct substances,  but  cocaine  is  itself  so  unstable  a  compound  that  it  is 
not  easy  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  to  affirm  that  some  of 
these  substances  are  not  allotropic  modifications  of  cocaine  itself. 
Coca  leaves  when  they  reach  this  country  contain,  so  far  as  assays 
have  yet  been  able  to  show,  not  more  than  0*8  per  cent,  of  cocaine. 
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