=Vinum Cocæ.=—About 1 in 8 of Sherry. _Dose._—One to two tablespoonfuls, diluted with wine or water. This is strongly medicated, it must contain half a grain of alkaloid in the ounce, else it cannot be sold without a license. =Coca Wine= in a more palatable and popular form, about 1 in 20 or 30 of a sweet red wine, is also prepared, and in doses of a wineglassful it forms an agreeable, exhilarating beverage. Wine of Coca checks vomiting of irritable stomach.—L. ii./85,1078. CHAPTER XIII. MEDICAL USES AND REFERENCES. Coca has been praised as a nervine and muscular tonic, preventing waste of tissue, appeasing hunger and thirst, relieving fatigue, and aiding free respiration, and as being useful in various diseases of the digestive and respiratory organs. It is said to be specially useful in many forms of asthma, chronic bronchitis, obstinate cough, phthisis, and general debility; in gastric derangements, owing to its slight astringency, it seems to give more tone to the stomach than the mere anæsthetic action of the Cocaine it contains would produce locally; it is recommended for indigestion, gastralgia, gastrodynia, nausea, sickness, distaste for food, is given to relieve pain, nausea, vomiting, or discomfort caused by excess in either eating or drinking or by pregnancy, and as a cure for morphine and alcohol craving. In using it for this in America it is said in some cases to have produced “Coca Craving.” Coca is also said to cause mental exhilaration, to overcome diffidence or bashfulness in company, and to be an excitant of the vital functions. It has been used in melancholia, in cases of inordinate hunger or thirst, such as occur in some forms of diabetes, and in cases of generative debility. Locally, a solution of the extract in water has been used as a pigment in irritated, inflamed, and granular conditions of the larynx and pharynx. The pastils have been used similarly for loss of voice due to weakness or relaxation of the vocal cords. Topically these preparations act as astringent sedatives without deranging the stomach. Externally, Coca may be made into poultices, or a plaster made with the extract combined with resin or soap plaster may be applied for rheumatism, lumbago, &c. The leaves are sometimes smoked to relieve asthma. The leaves are chewed to appease hunger and support strength, in the absence of food, and used generally for the stimulant and narcotic effects of tobacco and alcohol.—Pr. xvi. 467. Coca-leaves as an inhalation, or smoked in a pipe, have a decided effect on bronchial spasm.—L. i./76,520. Is of use to steady the nerves of excitable persons—to a sportsman in shooting, for example; to give endurance, is used by travellers in Bolivia and Peru, and to counteract the effect of rarefied air on mountains.—L. ii./76,449.