Cocain is an alkaloid, the use and the influence of which are almost as noteworthy as that of morphin. Cocain is derived from the leaves of the cocoa plant which grows in the Andes of Peru. Just as the Chinese use opium, so the Peruvian Indians use cocain.

Uses And Effects Of Co-Cain

Owing to its hydrochloric-acid salt, the effects of cocain differ somewhat from those of opium. It produces absolute 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 hypodermic injection. 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.

Effect of strychnin.