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Much important assistance has been rendered by Professor Christison, of Edinburgh, who perused the sheets as they passed through the press, and offered many valuable suggestions. In the latter portion of the work, much valuable aid has been afforded in the same way by Dr. Albert J. Bernays, of St. Thomas's Hospital.
The Committee held their. first meeting at the India Board Office, Cannon Row, March 15th, 1865, and proceeded to the consideration of the most effectual means of carrying out the work entrusted to them.
To this end it was resolved, in the first instance, to prepare lists of the principal drugs and medicinal plants of India, for distribution in that country, with the view of obtaining from medical officers serving there, any information they might have acquired from personal experience, which would enable the Committee to assign with greater precision an approximate value to each article. By means of the information thus collected, superadded to that obtained from an exhaustive examination of the principal English works on Indian Materia Medica, especially the Bengal Dispensatory, the Committee have the satisfaction of feeling that there will be found embodied in the following pages, in a condensed form, the principal part of the information which, up to the present day, exists relative to the indigenous drugs of India. The reports received from India have contributed in no small degree to whatever value the present volume may possess. Some of them, in addition to the record of personal experience, contain much matter relative to the use of the different drugs by the natives, and other particulars, of which the Committee were unable to avail themselves; but, in order that the information should not be lost, the documents have been deposited in the India Museum, where they are available for reference.
The best mode of arranging the materials at command received at the outset, the most careful consideration,
