20 TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER. 
So much is certain, however, that the principal work of the 
Chinese, the herbal Pen ¢’sao kang mu, which is, indeed of a 
much later date, is based in part upon very much older sources.’ 
The highly developed condition. of popular medicine of this 
people,’ which adheres so tenaciously to primeval customs, refers 
to a period of very remote antiquity. For information relating 
to many of the pharmaceutically important plants of China, 
pharmacognosy is indebted to the great Venetian traveller, 
Marco Polo (toward the close of the thirteenth century), as 
also in the eighteenth century to the missions of the Jesuits in 
China.* | 
That an early acquaintance with medicinal plants and 
drugs existed in Japan has not yet been proved, but it may cer- 
tainly be assumed, for instance, as regards menthol, ‘‘ Hakka.” 
4, As to how far this is the case with regard to India has like- 
wise not been established. Sanskrit literature possesses in 
“Susruta” and “Charaka” information relating to medicinal 
substances, which are probably in part of more ancient origin; 
but recent investigation assigns to these writings a much less 
ancient date.“ The extent of the pharmacognostical knowledge 
of Indian antiquity therefore requires more exact investigation; ° 
the application in India of many medicinal substances and pro- 
ducts of the vegetable kingdom adapted to fumigation, such as 
awhite sandal-wood, camphor, cinnamon, and cardamon may cer- 
1 Fliickiger, loc. cit., p. 1012. 
* Hanbury, ‘Science Papers,” 1876, 211 to 272. Fliickiger, Archiv der 
‘Pharmacie, 214 (1879), p. 9. 
*The activity of this order deserves further mention in connec- 
tion with the history of some other drugs, as, for instance, the cinchona 
‘barks, ginseng root, maté, and ignatia seeds. The sassafras tree appears 
to have been brought by Jesuits from Canada to France; the earliest in- 
formation regarding the tape-worm remedy koosso probably likewise 
originated from a member of this order. In Rome, Manila, Paris, and 
South America they maintained pharmacies, which were probably al- 
ways conducted by Jesuit friars, 
* Compare Flickiger, ‘‘ Pharmakognosie,” p. 1020. 
> Only a few points of guidance in this direction have as yet been 
_ Offered by Lassen’s ‘‘ Indische Alterthumskunde,” Bonn, 1847-1852. 
