VIENNA.

(From our Special Correspondent.)

Cocaine. – There is no doubt about the fact that the medical virtues
of erythroxylon coca are much better known and appreciated in America
than in Europe. But recently, since E. Merck, in Darmstadt, has begun
to prepare the alkaloid of that plant, and sell the easily soluble combination
of cocaine with hydrochloric acid – though for a remarkably high
price – some use has been made of cocaine, and some experience has been
collected in Vienna about the interesting drug. Prof. Fleischl and his colleagues
here have seen the excellent effect of cocaine during the period
of „abstinentia morphiæ“. Persons used to large amounts of morphia for
many years, could bear the privation of this alkaloid without suffering the
well-known tortures which are usually connected with it. Even in cases
in which the morphia was not withdrawn gradually, but stopped at once,
cocaine showed the best effects.

But we do not propose to dwell on those effects of cocaine which are
already known, but about a form of application which, so far as is known, is
quite new. This application has been brought forth by Dr. Koller, in Vienna.
Starting from the fact, that the parts of the tongue which were in direct contact
with a strong solution of cocaine lose for a certain time their sensibility,
he was led to try the application of cocaine to the cornea. If one or two drops
of a concentrated solution of cocaine hydrochlorate in water, be applied for
some minutes to the free surface of the eye, the sensitive nerves of the cornea
and of the surrounding parts become paralyzed, there is a local anæsthesia,
and the operations of extraction of cataract, of iridectomy, etc., can be performed
without giving the patient any pain.

The great value of cocaine, as a means of inducing local anæsthesia in the
eye, is evident.

There have been performed also some operations (here in Vienna) on the
larynx, in which a complete local anæsthesia was effected by cocaine, but in
that way it has been used previously, we are informed.