PREFACE. 
My aim in the compilation of this work has been to give 
to the drug trade a reliable, convenient, and guick reference 
book, containing all of the botanical drugs known up to the 
present time, giving all of their Botanical, Common, Pharma- 
copeial and German Common (in German) Names, and Medt- 
cal Properties. The author has consulted the best standard 
authorities, and works on Materia Medica, and an experience 
of fifteen years in the drug business materially assisted in 
the convenient arrangement of this work. To make the 
book practically useful, the subject has been treated with 
plainness and simplicity, as far as possible. I am well aware 
that druggists are, almost daily, perplexed by the use of 
common names, as applied to botanical drugs, and even 
botanical names (as many have two or more); and in the 
absence of a book to which you can readily refer, a sale is 
often missed, when you have the goods wanted, in your 
stock, but not known to you or your assistant, by the 
botanical or common name applied to it by your customer, 
(the only one known to him). By close examination of this 
work, you will see the author has surmounted all of these 
difficulties, and believes it is a Reference Book, that will be 
fully appreciated, and has long been needed by the drug 
trade. 
J.M.NICKELL. 
