The principal active constituent of coca-leaves was discovered about 1860 by Niemann, and called by him cocaine. It is an alkaloid which combines with various acids in the formation of salts. It has the quality of benumbing raw and mucous surfaces, for which purpose it was applied first in 1862 by Schroff and in 1868 by Moreno. In 1880 Van Aurap hinted that this property might some day be utilized. Karl Koller logically concluded from what was known about it that this anaesthetic property could be taken advantage of for work about the eye, and made a series of experiments upon the lower animals, by which he established its efficiency and made a brilliant discovery. He reported his experiments to the Congress of German Oculists, at Heidelberg, in 1884. News of this was transmitted with great rapidity, and within a few weeks the substance was used all over the world. Its use spread rapidly to other branches of surgery, and cocaine local anaesthesia became quickly an accomplished fact. More time was required to point out its disagreeable possibilities, its toxic properties, and the like, but it now has an assured and most important place among anæsthetic agents, and has been of the greatest use to probably ten per cent, of the civilized world. To Koller is entirely due the credit of establishing its remarkable properties. The{315} writer makes no apology here for having introduced two distinct chapters,--one upon the history of antiseptic surgery, the other upon the history of anæsthesia. First of all, they are the two grandest medical discoveries of all time; and, secondly, they are of Anglo-Saxon origin,--the one British, the other American. To the introduction of anaesthetics and antiseptics is due a complete revolution of earlier methods, complete reversal of mortuary statistics, and the complete relief of pain during surgical operations; in other words, to these two discoveries the human race owes more of the prolongation of life and relief of suffering than can ever be estimated or formulated in words. What an everlasting disgrace it is that, while to the great murderers of mankind, men like Napoleon in modern times and his counterparts in all times, the world ever does honor, erects imposing monuments and writes volumes of encomiums and flattering histories, the men to whom the world is so vastly more indebted for all that pertains to life and comfort are scarcely ever mentioned save in medical history, while the world at large is even ignorant of their names. For this reason, if for none other, these chapters find an appropriate place in a work of this character. Those interested in a somewhat more elaborate presentation of this subject may find it in an anniversary address delivered by the writer on October 16, 1896 (the semicentennial of Morton's public demonstration), in the Medical School of the University of Buffalo, and published in the _Buffalo Medical Journal_ of November, 1896. CHAPTER XIII. THE HISTORY OF ANTISEPSIS.