Mr. T. N. Mukerjee and Sir George Watt, who spared no pains to make the Exhibition of indigenous drugs as complete as possible. The Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, originally projected by Mr. Mukherji, but subsequently completed by Dr. G. Watt, contains informations from all possible sources, as to the uses and properties of indigenous drugs.
IV.
"The only way to illumine the whole field 01 native therapeutics," wrote an intelligent foreigner, "is to survey it in small tracts and sift the value of those drugs peculiar to each province There is a wide feeling that there is a beneficence in the scheme of nature which provides in every country suitable remedies on the spot for the ill to which humanity is locally most prone. Very little has been done so far to incorporate in the practice of physicians in the country the medicines which in India nature scatters broadcast from her lap."
It is necessary to pass in review the principal works which have advanced our knowledge of the subject. In order to do this, we should take into consideration those works which treat of the drugs of the different provinces of this country. In fact, excluding the "Pharmacopoeia of India," the "Pharmacographica Indica" and Watt's " Dictionary of the Economic Products of India," all the works which have made their appearance deal with drugs and medicinal plants of certain provinces only. For obvious reasons this arrangement is a good one.[1]
I have already stated the great stimulus that was given to the study of the subject by the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Calcutta as till recently the Capital of India possessing one of the finest Botanical gardens in the world afforded great facilities for the study of the subject. Roxburgh, Fleming and Royle were the first to write about the medicinal plants and their uses in the Asiatic Researches and the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society. But there was no systematic treatise on the
- ↑ Of the drugs used by the ancient Hindus, the best account in English is the work on Hindu Materia Medica by the late Dr. Udoy Chand Dufct. This work requires re-editing.
