INTRODUCTION. lxiii
Products of Bombay, published in 1862, was the first work that gave a systematic account of the Bombay drugs. In the Pharmacopoeia of India published in 1867, the Bombay drugs were not adequately represented. But since then, due princi- pally to the labors of Sakharam Arjun and Dymock, the Bombay drugs have been far better worked out than those of any other part of India. Sakharam Arjun's " Bombay Drugs " was published in 1879. He was a skilled botanist, being the occupant of the Chair of Botany in the Grant Medical College. This publication was intended to serve as a catalogue of the Indian drugs in the Museum of the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley. Dr. Sakharam Arjun succeeded in correctly identifying some of the bazar drugs and brought to the notice of the profession a good many medicinal plants used by the natives of Bombay.
Dymock 's " Vegetable Materia Medica of Western India" is by far the best work on the indigenous drugs, not only of Bombay, but of India generally. It bears strong testimony to his having patiently worked at the subject for a large number of years. The Pharmacographica Indim will remain, for many years to come, the standard work of reference on indigenous drugs.
The medicinal plants and drugs of Sind have not yet been properly studied. The only work on the subject is that of Murray on " Plants and Drugs of Sind." Murray, neither being a medical man nor a skilled botanist, compiled his work from other sources and, as such, the work is of doubtful value as a guide to the plants and drugs of that province.
Our knowledge of the medicinal plants and drugs of the Punjab is also scant and meagre. Honnigberger's work named " Thirty-five years in the East " was the first one mentioning the Punjab medicinal plants and drugs. Honnigberger was a homoeopathic practitioner and was physician to Ran jit Singh. The work is hardly of any value, and is very seldom referred to now-a-days.
The Punjab Exhibition of 1864 brought for the first time to light the drugs of that province. Mr. Baden Powell described
