(209) 



477 2 - Grapenuts. — An artificial cereal breakfast food. Presented by F. H. 

 Leggett & Company, of New York City. 



Drugs 



Vegetable drugs are plants or parts of plants from which 

 medicines are made. A drug, if used in the natural state 

 as medicine, is both a drug and a medicine, but usually 

 the medicine is prepared from the drug in such a way as to 

 destroy the original character of the latter. This may be 

 done by extracting from it in a pure state the proximate 

 principle that possesses the medicinal activity, as quinine 

 from cinchona bark or morphine from opium; or a tincture, 

 solid or fluid extract, syrup, or other galenical preparation 

 may be made from it. 



Some drugs are better adapted for the manufacture of 

 one of these preparations and some for another, so that 

 much study of drugs is required before the best methods of 

 their employment can be determined. There is more or 

 less conformity between botanical relationship and similar 

 medicinal properties, although there are striking exceptions 

 to the rule. Related plants, even when they do agree in 

 medicinal properties, may differ very widely in the strength 

 of such properties. Almost equally great differences in 

 strength may exist between different lots of the same drug. 

 Thus, one lot of opium may contain but three or four per 

 cent, of morphine, while another may have fifteen or 

 twenty per cent. These differences may be due to the 

 region of growth, to the climate or the character of the 

 season, to the stage of the plant's development when 

 collected, to the method of curing, the care in packing and 

 transporting, or to the length of time that has elapsed 

 since collecting. It is therefore clear that medicines made 

 from such drugs by a fixed process may exhibit equal 

 differences in activity, and such differences have been of 

 grave importance in medical practice. 



The art of making medicinal preparations from drugs 

 pertains to Pharmacy, which is thus one of the most im- 



