vill PREFACE. 
have been medicinally investigated, are many of 
useful properties and decided efficacy. Several de- 
partments of the Materia Medica may be amply 
supplied from our own forests and. meadows, al- 
though there are others, for which we must as yet 
depend on foreign countries. We have yet to dis- 
cover our anodynes and our emetics, although 
we abound in bitters, astringents, aromatics and 
demulcents. In the present state of our knowl- 
edge we could not well dispense with opium and 
ipicacuanha, yet a great number of foreign drugs, 
such as gentian, columbo, chamomile, kino, cat- 
echu, cascarilla, canella, &c. for which we pay 
a large annual tax to other countries, might in 
all probability be superceded by the indigenous 
products of our own. It is certainly better that 
our own country people should have the benefit 
of collecting such articles, than that we should 
pay for them to the Moors of Africa, or the In- 
dians of Brazil. : 
Independent of the frauds of adulteration, 
which may be practised by savages upon drugs, 
whose origin is hardly known to Europeans, the 
embarrassments occasioned by the chances of war 
and commercial restrictions, form serious objec- 
tions to an exclusive dependence on foreign med- 
icines. It is but a few years since some circum- 
