1890 Coca and its Therapeutic Application by Angelo Mariani

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not produce any disorder of the digestive functions; it stimulates them, exerts a refreshing action on the gastric mucous membrane,and on that account so advantageously replaces the preparations of cinchona,iron,strychnine,etc. "There is," says Dr.Mallez,"a form of anasmia to which the attention of physicians has not yet been called,and which yields marvelously to the employment of Vin Mariani; we allude to that state of profound depression of the economy,of extremely marked impoverishment of the blood, which also results from the prolonged abuse of bal- samics in the treatment of diseases of the urinary passages. "The number of persons who, attacked with blennorr- hagia,use cubebs,copaiba,turpentine, etc., to a deplorable extent is considerable. So true is this that, out of a hun dred young dyspeptics,we may affirm withoutfear of being in error that at least forty of them have become so by the use of balsamics. "In like manner, the number of patients affected with urinary gravel whom the prolonged and excessive use of the agents just mentioned, has rendered dyspeptic and then neuropathic is enormous. Like the former,they owe the profound disorder of their digestive functions to the immoderate use of resins and oleo-resins. "It is of the first importance,therefore,to relieve these persons by makingthem take,after havinggiven them light laxatives and some preparations intended to strengthen the stomach,not iron, not cinchona, not, as we have said above,local tonics, which would be of little if any use,but diffusible tonics,that is to say,those that act upon the local condition and at the same time upon the general condition, and which, moreover,do not constipate. "It is here that Vin Mariani proves its great advantage and succeeds where other tonics have failed, in stimulat ing the functions of the stomach. On the one hand by the small quantity of tannin which it contains, on the other through the active principles of Coca, associated with the

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