2 THE MISSION OF PHARMACOGNOSY. 
are sharply characterized in a chemical sense, or, briefly stated, 
chemical units; for only such substances as are at all times ac- 
cessible and complete in their identity can afford a sure founda- 
tion for scientific medicine and pharmacy. In this direction 
lies the aim of the future. 
Medicinal agents of this kind are outside of the sphere of 
pharmacognosy. By general concurrence in pharmaceutical 
circles, there are assigned to it those substances which are di- 
rectly furnished by nature, or at least such as have not actually 
been submitted to chemical processes. Since the few crude medi- 
cinal substances from the mineral kingdom which were em- 
ployed in former times have long ago lost their significance, the 
scientific knowledge which pharmacognosy has to offer is con- 
fined to organic nature, or virtually only to the vegetable king- 
dom; for even among the animals, and the parts and products 
of animals, only castor, musk, and cantharides represent at the 
present time important elements as medicinal agents. In the 
cantharides cantharidin alone is of importance, which now 
stands at the disposal of medical science in a pure form. Phar- 
maceutical interest in the beetle itself is therefore diminished in 
a similar manner as it is, at least from this standpoint, in the 
“animals which afford cod-liver oil, honey, isinglass, and milk- . 
sugar. 
The wonderful development of the natural sciences and of 
medicine, which exerts so great an influence, especially 
since the second decade of the present century, has liberated 
pharmacognosy of an enormous burden. In a pharmaceutical 
work which was first published at Ulm in the year 1641, under 
the title “‘ Pharmacopoeia medico-chymica seu ‘Thesaurus phar- 
macologicus,” by the city physician Johann Christian Schréder, 
of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and which in its time was much 
valued, the author also enumerated the **simplicia” then em- 
ployed. Among these there were about thirty minerals, and 
more than one hundred and fifty medicinal substances derived — 
from the animal kingdom or representing entire animals, to- 
gether with a very large number of roots, herbs, leaves, etc. 
Such a superfluity of medicinal agents, with all of which it was — 
