supplemented by about fifty new herbs not referred to by the older writers. Among the new names we find Elivaka (aloes), Anannasa (pineapple), Peruka (guava), Tamakhu (tobacco), Puclina (mint), Medica (henna), Sitaphala (cus- tard apple), etc.
The virtues of the Indian drugs were known not only in the country of their birth, but in other countries as well. Some five centuries before Christ, Hippocrates in his Materia Medica recommends several Indian plants mentioned in Sanskrit works of much anterior date, as for instance Sesamum indicum (tila), Nardostachys jatamansi (jatamansi), Boswellia thurifera (kunduru), Zingiber officinale (shringavera), Piper nigrum (marichi), etc. In the first century of the Christian era Dioscorides, a Greek physician, thoroughly investigated the medicinal virtues of many Indian plants which were then taken to the market of Europe, and incorporated in his extant book on Materia Medica, which for many ages was received as a standard work. In the second century, Claudius Galen, to whose writings modern European science is indebted for many useful discoveries, published his famous work, the leading opinions in which as to hot
