Owing to its hydrochloric-acid salt, the effects of cocain differ somewhat from those of opium. It produces relative freedom from pain, and is used more particularly to produce insensibility in local parts of the body, as in the case of extracting teeth. The cocain slaves, which are increasing alarmingly in this country, usually take it by snuffing, or in an atomizer. The habit is usually acquired, as in the case of morphin, by the prescription of a physician. The patient, learning from experience the freedom from pain and the sense of exhilaration that can be produced by the drug, and not being warned by "his" physician of its baneful effects, continues the habit after the doctor's treatment has ceased, and awakes to find a monster owning his body and his mind. The cocain fiend, like the opium slave, develops an insatiable desire for the drug, and suffers extreme mental and physical pain when deprived of the usual allowance. The development of untruthfulness and trickery in a person desiring his allowance of a forbidden drug, is one of the marked traits of the narcotic slave.
Cocain in patent medicines
There are a number of different medicines which depend for their action wholly upon the cocain they contain. A large number of catarrhal powders in the market are diluted forms of cocain, and are used extensively both by those who do not realize the nature of the drug they are using, and by those who know that they are cocain slaves, but prefer to disguise the fact in this manner.
NUX VOMICA AND STRYCHNIN
Effect of strychnin
Nux vomica is derived from the seeds of a plant that grows in India. Strychnin is the alkaloid which exists therein. Strychnin is quite different in its effects from the above-mentioned alkaloids, for instead of benumbing the nerves, causing sleep or a pleasing sensation, the effect is a nerve stimulus which causes muscular convulsions.
The medical use of strychnin is more of a stimulant than of a narcotic. It is one of the most widely used of all the drugs prescribed by the old school physicians, and is extremely dangerous in over-doses. Indeed, thousands of people have been killed by strychnin poisoning.
QUININ
Quinin is derived from Peruvian or cinchona-bark. This bark, like the juice of the poppy plant, contains a number of alkaloids. These alkaloids, in turn, may react with acids, forming salts.