174 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



sources. It is quite lilcely that a number of tliose who have started drug farms 

 will be discouraged, as the marliet prices for crude drugs will come down froiv 

 fifty to seventy-five per cent. In other words, the prices will approach more 

 nearly normal conditions. There are two things necessary to make drug farm- 

 ing a success In the United States. The first is, that the most economical 

 conditions must be worked out for growing the plant and harvesting the drug. 

 Tlie second is, that that sufficiently large farms must be developed so as to 

 make it profitable for the farmer. The profits in most cases, no doubt, will 

 be greater than in ordinary truck or produce farming, but the permanent 

 returns cannot be expected to compare with those which pi'evail at present. 

 It was partly with the view of helping the situation, especially in Michigan, 

 that experiments were conducted this year at the University of Michigan 

 College of Pharmacy, under the direction of the author. 



Some 20,000 medicinal plants were grown, representing more than fifty 

 dilTerent species. Notwithstanding all of the difficulties that naturally beset 

 such an experiment in its early stages, including the great variations in seeds 

 and the difliculty of securing labor, the loss of plants was so small as to be 

 practically negligible and the crops from nearly 15,000 plants were harvested, 

 the remainder being left in the field. The facilities for drying such large quan- 

 tities of material were inadequate, and the floors of the lecture and laboratoi'y 

 rooms of the Science building and the attic or loft of the Chemical building 

 had to be utilized for drying the crop. 



Of all those who have written upon the subject of the cultivation of 

 medicinal plants in this country almost no one has had the vision to see the 

 possibilities of this new industry, and for the most part all efforts have been 

 directed toward discouraging rather than encouraging the enterprise. One 

 of the chief objections which has been raised is that the amount of drugs used 

 is so small compared to the enormous amounts of foodstuffs. For instance, 

 it is estimated that the amount of belladonna which would be used in the 

 United States could be grown on about three hundred acres. While this limita- 

 tion may be true of quite a number of our medicinal plants, yet it must also 

 be borne in mind that some of these drug-yielding plants have very great uses 

 outside of Ihe field of medicine. As an illustration of this, we may refer to the 

 castor oil plant, the seeds of w^hich yield a fixed oil commonly known as castor 

 oil. It would seem reasonable that the output from five hundred acres should 

 yield all the castor oil which is used in medicine in the United States. But 

 its uses in this manner are infinitesimal compared to its use as a lubricant for 

 fine machinery. During normal times we import over one million bushels of 

 castor bean per year, the oil being extracted by vegetable oil crushers in the 

 United States. So dependent was our government during the last year of the 

 war on the supply of caster oil as a lubricant for the motors of aeroplanes that 

 it made arrangements in the southern states for the planting of one himdred 

 thousand acres of the castor oil plant. The problem with this industry is not 



