• M. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS 

 MEDICAL BOTANY. 



The Committee appointed under the following resolution, adopted at 

 the last meeting of the American Medical Association, would re- 

 spectfully 



REPORT. 



"Resolved, That a committee of one from each state represented 

 in this Convention be appointed by the president, whose duty it shall 

 be to investigate the Indigenous Medical Botany of our country; 

 paying particular attention to such plants as are now, or may be 

 hereafter during their term of service, found to possess valuable 

 medicinal properties, and are not already accurately described in the 

 standard works of our country; and report the same in writing, 

 giving not only the botanical and medical description of each, but 

 also the localities where they may be found, to the next annual 

 meeting of the American Medical Association." 



Until within a very recent period, and, indeed, we may say until 

 the present time, our own indigenous Materia Meclica has received 

 far too little attention from the profession. Its ample resources 

 have been but partially developed, and many of its articles which 

 have found a place in medical works, have been very imperfectly in- 

 vestigated, and hence are but partially understood. To be satisfied 

 of the truth of this, we have only to look over the list of indigenous 

 articles classed as medicinal, by the few able medical botanists who 

 have entered upon this fertile field of inquiry, and scrutinize the evi- 

 dence on which their reputation rests. We shall find that compara- 

 tively few of them have been either chemically analyzed, or their 

 action on the animal economy ascertained by any well directed series 

 of observations. Hence, it was not so much the object of the mover 

 of the resolution, under which the committee now acts, to add new 

 articles to the list of those already claimed as medicinal, as it was 



