"On several occasions, when digitalis has proved to be useless or injurious, I have had very excellent results from caffeine or convallaria. Certainly, the latter drug is more easily tolerated by a sensitive stomach than digitalis is; and whenever the nervous supply of the heart is especially implicated, I believe that I secure more quieting effects from its employment. Among well known cardiac tonics and stimulants for obtaining temporary good effects, at least, I know of no drug quite equal to Coca. Given in the form of wine or fluid extract, it does much, at times, to restore the heart-muscle to its former tone. I have obtained the best effects from the use of Mariani's wine. From personal information given me by this reliable pharmacist, these results are attributable to the excellent quality of the Coca leaves and of the wine which he uses in its manufacture." In cases of morphinomania, Dr. Dujardin-Beaumetz has pointed out the advantage to be obtained with the Vin Mariani, and, following him, Dr. Palmer, of Louisville, and Dr. Sigmaux Treux, of Vienna, have obtained excellent results with this therapeutic agent. Further on, we give a case of Dr. Villeneuve's, showing the cure of a morphinomaniac by the combined use of the Vin and the Pâte (Mariani). Dr. H. Libermann recommends the use of Coca, in the form of Vin Mariani, against morphinomania, nicotinism and alcoholism. "In _general diseases_ it is to the stimulating properties of the plant that recourse is oftenest had. These properties make it the tonic _par excellence_ whenever the object is to build up a system that has been enfeebled from any cause. Its preparations, accordingly, may be ordered in convalescence from all grave fevers, in anæmia and chloro-anæmia, in all diathetic or cachætic conditions, whatever may have been their original cause (chronic rheumatism, gout, genito-urinary affection, cancer, etc.), in short, in all cases where the system is debilitated from any cause whatever." But it is, above all, in diseases that have a depressing action on the nervous system that the effect of Coca is truly marvelous. Gubler, in his _Commentaires de thérapeutique_, shows himself its warm champion. "Coca," says he, "very much like tea and coffee, lends to the nervous system the force with which it is charged, after the manner of a fulminate, but with this difference, that it yields it gradually and not all at once." The theory of the _fulminates_, invented by M. Gubler, tallies so well with observed facts, that Mantegazza, without generalizing and without pretending to form a theory, but limiting himself to describing by simile what he had seen, truer probably than he himself supposed, said: "Under the influence of Coca, it seems that a new force is gradually introduced into our organism, like water into a sponge." (A. Dechambre.)