A number of cases of confirmed cocaine habit have recently been reported. While some of them lack confirmation, it is certain that several physical and mental wrecks have been caused by the excessive use of this alkaloid. The South American Indians, long famous as coca eaters, seem as a rule not to succumb to its effects. They use the dried leaf, which they chew, previously introducing a small amount of alkali, to set the cocaine free. In civilized countries the alkaloid as a chloride is usually employed, and is administered by hypodermic injection.

The practice of using it habitually in excess is hitherto reported as almost confined to physicians. Its effects upon its victims are very sad. The brain becomes permanently or for a period affected, a species of lunacy being produced. Just as in the case of opium eaters, the moral nature is undermined. One doctor was reported, so recently as to be within the memory of our readers, as having turned on the gas in a drug store where the alkaloid was refused him, with the design of asphyxiating the clerk, in which attempt he nearly succeeded. Another doctor, within a space of some sixteen months, has gone insane from the cocaine habit and has been removed to an asylum, leaving his wife also ill from the effects of the same drug, with which he had experimented on her.

If the cases continue to multiply, there may be room for questioning the utility to man of the discovery of this anÆsthetic. It is doubtful if all the services in local anÆsthesia rendered by it can compensate for the ill it has already done.