The plague of nerves : their treatment / by a physician.

  • Stephen Smith & Co.
Date:
[1893?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The plague of nerves : their treatment / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/36 (page 3)
    WHAT HALL’S COCA WINE IS. It may interest the reader to know something of the composition of thi^ most valuable remedy. Its active constituents is Coca, a substance which is famous for its wonderful power of restoring nervous tissue and | building up nerve forces. Coca may justly share with opium the praise of being “ God’s best gift to man,” for it is as invaluable as a nerve tonic as opium is as a sedative. The marvellous virtues of this substance, as set forth in the following pages, are contained in the leaves of a shrub known to botanists as Eryth- roxylon Coca. This grows on the slopes of the Andes, in Peru and Bolivia, and also in the Argentina and other parts of southern and central America. When the Spaniards conquered Peru in the sixteenth century they were struck by the constant use which the natives made of Coca. When questioned on the subject, the Peruvians answered that it made them proof against hunger, cold and fatigue ; that it gave strength to their muscles and endurance to their frames ; and that in ad¬ dition to this, it gave them an indescribable feeling of well-being which made them, like Tam o’Shanter,“o’er a’the ills o’life victorious.” Historical writers tell us that the plant played an important part in the reli¬ gious ceremonies of the Incas, and it was regarded by the people as having something of a sacred character. So deep and all-pervading was the reverence with which the Coca plant was regarded by the Indians, that after the Spanish Conquest an attempt was made by the authorities of the Church to condemn its use as a mischievous superstition. In a royal decree, dated October 18th, 1569, it is expressly declared that the notions entertained by the natives as to Coca are delusions of the devil. The evidence of the extra¬ ordinary properties of the plant, however, was too jg_,_,_1