tested all the organs of the animal body, will return to the most ancient remedies of mankind, to the medicinal plants and drugs, for the utility of which the experience of the thousands of years vouches."
There were other medical men also who were coming to look upon drugs of synthetical origin acting upon the system as foreign bodies, depressing and paralysing its functions. Bat according to them such was not the case with the drugs of vegetable origin which in their natural combination meet nutritional conditions of the system. The possibilities and potentialities of medicinal plants and vegetable drugs have not been as yet properly and fully studied. In an article on "the teaching of chemical medicine," in the British Medical Journal of 3rd January, 1914, Dr. Mackenzie wrote that:—
"Not one single drug has been carefully studied so as to understand its full effects on the human system, effects that could be easily recognised had a systematic examination been carried out when it was administered in the hospital wards."
The above observation of Dr, Mackenzie is fully borne out by what Dr. Charles J. Macalister, M.D., F.R.C.P. has discovered, as reported in the British Medical Journal of January 6, 1912, in Symphytum officinale, a plant known as "comfrey" in England. He considers it as a "potent cell proliferant." It was a long forgotten remedy which was used in olden times to heal ulcers. On analysis, the root of the plant was found to contain allantione to which Dr. Macalister attributed its action as a potent cell proliferant.
Dr. William Bramwell, M.A., M.D., B. Ch., of Liverpool, concluded a note on the above-named plant published in the same issue of the British Medical Journal in the following significant words.
"It is indeed refreshing and gratifying, in these days of serums and vaccines and highly complicated preparations, the administration of which, in some cases, is fraught with the gravest possible danger and soul-harrowing anxiety on the part of the administrator, to find a physician of Dr. Macalister's standing setting on foot the investigation of so simple and natural a remedy as common comfrey."
