Prof. Grasset, of Montpelier, almost at the same time as Vulpian, observed the same effects of Cocaine, but a greater persistency in the phenomena of insensibility following the intravenous injection of the solution of hydrochloride of Cocaine. At about that time, Dr. Laborde, of the Académie de Médecine, treated still more deeply of the action of Cocaine in three successive notes to the Société de Biologie (Nov. 22d and 29th and Dec. 27th, 1884). This learned physiologist studied the analgesic action generally resulting from subcutaneous injections of 0.03 of hydrochloride of Cocaine, in three doses, in the guinea-pig. He saw it at the same time produce a general hyper-excitability which irresistibly forced the animal to move, and even produced epileptic convulsions; the general analgesic state lasted for more than forty-eight hours. M. Laborde, in attributing the secondary peripheric analgesia of intravenous or subcutaneous injections of hydrochlorate of Cocaine to the cerebral insusceptibility to pain, unconsciously made Cocaine a general anæsthetic. Prof. Arloing (1885, _Mémoire Soc. Biologie_) has undertaken many experiments for demonstrating that Cocaine is not a general anæsthetic. In his experiments, the learned physiologist of Lyons confirmed the results obtained by Vulpian as to the modifications occasioned by Cocaine of the arterial pressure; he saw, like his predecessors, the excito-medullary and convulsary effect of large doses of Cocaine and the increase of the salivary secretion, and in regard to its cerebro-spinal effect, he compared it to strychnine. General analgesia did not occur except from fatal doses or when accompanied by convulsions. The hydrochlorate of Cocaine, according to M. Arloing, produces and can produce nothing but local anæsthesia by temporarily changing the physical properties of the protoplasm of the terminal and fibrillary nervous elements easily accessible to medicinal agents in the cornea and mucous surfaces. We will presently show that the several learned men who have been engaged in investigating the mechanism of action of the active principles of Coca were by no means in accord as regards the _modus agendi_ of Cocaine in the production of local anæsthesia. While M. Dujardin-Beaumetz likens the local anæsthetic action of Cocaine to that of cold, and while M. Laborde considers that it produces a diminished blood supply by the vaso-constrictor action of the great sympathetic nervous system, M. Arloing, on the contrary, explains it by a local action on the nervous protoplasm. Moreover, in 1886, Schilling, a supporter of the vascular theory, advised inhalations of nine drops of nitrite of amyl, in three doses, inhalations which caused dilatation of the vessels, to revive patients poisoned with injections of Cocaine hydrochlorate.