The present war has shown the necessity of using herbs and plants in preference to Synthetics. The President of the Botanical section of the British Association held at New Castle in 1916, very truly observed, regarding the medicinal plant industry, "Experience would indicate that here is opportunity for investigation, and, unless due care is taken, also danger of waste of time, money and effort. A careful systematic study of
species, varieties and races is in some cases desirable in order to ensure the growth of the most productive or valuable plant; and such a study might also reveal useful substitutes or additions. Here the co-operation between the scientific worker and the commercial man is imperative."
The study of medicinal plants is neglected by medical men all over the world, but more so in India. These are contemptuously referred to as "old women's" remedies.[1] It is our misfortune that the chemistry and pharmacology of most of these plants have not been properly investigated.
The late Right Hon'ble Mr. Gladstone was a man of extraordinary genius. As a scholar, politician, and statesman he will ever shine in the pages of English history as long as England is not effaced from the map of the World. In the course of a speech, delivered on the 26th March, 1890, on the occasion of the opening of Guy's Hospital Residential College, referring to the importance of the study of Botany with a view to learn the "qualities of plants which are so remarkable and powerful in their healing capacities," he said:—
"I am not aware whether Botany now forms a recognised branch of the medical education, but I cannot help wishing that it did, and hoping that it may in the future, first of all, not only because it is in itself a most beautiful
- ↑ Dr. John Foote, Associate Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Georgetown University, Washington, writes of the importance of Trees in Medicine as follows:—
"And yet, in spite of the pharmaceutical image breakers and the therapeutic nihilists, some of the most valuable remedies used in medicine come from trees. * * *
"And if, as has been asserted, the decadence of Rome was really due to malaria, and if her glory was obscured by a cloud of mosquitoes rather than by the dust of battles, then it may be that the possession of some cinchona and the planting of the eucalyptus in the Roman marshes might have prevented a great civilization from withering and fluttering away and changed the countenance of history." [Scientific American Supplement, January 13, 1917 p. 26].
