them and the uses to which they are put.[1] If we turn to the past history of our art, we find that our knowledge regarding the properties of some of the most useful medicines has been obtained in this empirical way.
Lastly, we should not neglect to bestow our attention on those indigenous plants which have not been used medicinally by the natives of this country, but are in much use in other countries.
After recording the medicinal uses, we have to commence the more important subject, viz., that of "weeding out the worthless from the good" amongst these medicinal plants. For this purpose, we have to seek the aid of chemistry. It is well-known that plants generally owe their virtues as medicinal agents to certain characteristic alkaloids and principles present in them. Because a complete and full chemical analysis of the medicinal plants of this country has not yet been performed, it is therefore that there exists so much uncertainty regarding their actions. This isolation of principles will constitute a great improvement in pharmacy. For, then, instead of using preparations made from plants which differ in constitution from time to time, and vary in the strength of their active principles and physiological characteristics, depending on the climate, season, and amount of sunshine under which, and the soil in which, they have grown, we should use the active principles in which the same variability is unlikely to occur. Moreover, they would possess the advantages of being always alike, easily assimilable and capable of ready solubility, ease in administration and rapidity as well as certainty of action. Then a practitioner also could carry his whole dispensary in a portable form.[2]
This chemical analysis would also help us in determining the actions of medicines in health and disease. It should, however, be borne in mind, that chemical analysis but imperfectly reveals the real nature of many drugs. The presence of dissociated
- ↑ Vanausadi Prakas, by Mr. Vasudev Chintaman Bapat, in Mahrathi, is as far as I know, the only work which gives the uses to which some of the medicinal plants are put by the natives of Concan.
- ↑ The alkaloids have all been discovered within the last 100 years. For want of chemical investigation indigenous drugs are used in their crude forms, instead of their alkaloids or active principles. Brunton's "Iron Age of Therapeutics," is one of remote and uncertain future, but I believe a great deal of iron, if not steel, can be extracted, very useful for all practical purposes from the stones in the shape of our indigenous drugs.
