INTRODUCTION.
Each race has its fashions and fancies. The Indian munches the betel; the Chinaman woos with passion the brutalizing intoxication of opium; the European occupies his idle hours or employs his leisure ones in smoking, chewing or snuffing tobacco. Guided by a happier instinct, the native of South America has adopted Coca. When young, he robs his father of it; later on, he devotes his first savings to its purchase. Without it he would fear vertigo on the summit of the Andes, and weaken at his severe labor in the mines. It is with him everywhere; even in his sleep he keeps his precious quid in his mouth.
But should Coca be regarded merely as a masticatory? And must we accept as irrevocable the decision of certain therapeutists: "Cocaine, worthless; Coca, superfluous drug"?[1]
For several years laryngologists such as: Fauvel, of France; Morell Mackenzie and Lennox Browne, of England; and Elsberg, of America, had undertaken the defense of Coca.
Under such patronage Coca and its preparations were not slow in becoming popular.
Charles Fauvel was the first to make use of it as a general tonic, having a special action on the larynx; and to make known its anæsthetic and analgesic qualities.
Coca was further recommended, as it were empirically, against stomatitis, gingivitis, gastric disturbances, and phthisis (Rabuteau), Eléments de thérapeutique et de pharmacologie.