ing the symptoms], and I administered cocaine in such and such doses, with the following remarkably favorable results." Immediately nearly every doctor in town that has a case bearing any considerable resemblance to the case thus described, pre scribes cocaine in the same doses, on the strength of this single " authority," and all this crystallizes under the eye of the drug gist who compounds the various prescrip tions. Not many years ago the British govern ment — I state this from general recollec tion — conceived the idea of cultivating the cinchona tree in India, with the view of manufacturing cheaper quinine for use in the British army in that hot and malarial country. They took from their native homes in South America some cinchona trees, and replanted them upon the hills of the island of Ceylon. The trees grew and developed; their bark was stripped and manufactured into what was supposed to be sulphate of quinine; but when the manu facturing chemists had completed their manipulations, it was found that it was not exactly sulphate of quinine. It was a dif ferent alkali of the cinchona principle, and they called it cinchonidia. Now, it would never do for the British medical staff to admit they had been mistaken; so orders were sent out from the war office in London to all the army surgeons to experiment in the hospitals with this new form of extract of the cinchona bark. These orders were tantamount to commands to make favorable reports where possible; and many surgeons, anxious to earn the pleasure, or, at least, not to incur the displeasure, of their official superiors in London, made favorable reports. These reports were collated and published, and, of course, a favorable impression as to the merits of this new extract of the cin chona bark soon took possession of the whole medical world. The result was that cinchonidia was a great " rage " for a time, and took the place of quinine. Nearly all
the doctors prescribed it. The British sur geons had discovered that it possessed all the beneficial qualities of quinine without producing any of its evil effects, and Ameri can doctors continued to utter this twaddle until the use of the drug died to a great degree. It was found, and candor was obliged to confess it at last, that it was merely a weak form of quinine so far as its physical effects were concerned, and that, if the patient took a dose large enough, it would produce, in many cases, the usual illeffects of quinine, including the buzzing in the ears. Antipyrine had a similar " rage " until its evil after-effects were discovered. Cocaine, a few years ago, was " all the rage," and they prescribed it for nearly everything, and, like opium and hasheesh, it produced such happy temporary effects on overwrought ner vous constitutions, that many of the doctors began to take it, and thereby to ruin them selves. Many eminent judges can be named that have had that most valuable of all early training, the training of a boy on a farm. They can recall the case of a flock of sev eral hundred sheep breaking into a field almost en masse. The day is warm and sultry; the sheep feel the effects of the heat. They trot along in an indifferent sort of a way behind some old bell-wether or other self-constituted leader, hugging the shady side of a " stake-and-ridered " fence as closely as they can. Suddenly the bell wether discovers a rotten rail in the fence. He plunges through it with a short " blat "; instantly the whole herd follow him, and with such a vehement rush as to carry off on their backs all the superincumbent rails, whereby a whole length of fence is torn down, and the whole herd are instantly rev elling in a rich clover-field. It is often the same way with judicial work. Some old judi cial bell-wether determines that the court shall take a new departure. He gives the judicial " blat," and dives through the hole in
