BIOLOGICAL PAPERS. 191 



PRELIMINARY LIST OF MEDICINAL AND ECONOMIC 

 KANSAS PLANTS, 



WITH THEIR REPUTED THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES. 



By B. B. Smyth, Topeka. 

 Read ( by title) before the Academy, at lola, December 31, 1901. 



npHIS list is the outgrowth of the studies made by the writer while 

 -*- serving as "professor of medical botany" in the department of 

 pharmacy of the Kansas Medical College, from 1891 to 1896, when 

 the department was abolished. The preparation of the list, however, 

 was not abandoned at the time, but has been kept up till the present 

 time. 



Medical botany is a relic of the past. It served a good purpose 

 during the infancy of the science of medicine, and is one of the 

 foundation stones upon which that grand science is built. It was a 

 favorite study of our grandmothers, and even our mothers laid much 

 stress upon the knowledge gained by experimentation with herbs, 

 roots, etc. It must always remain as the most important science 

 among semicivilized and crude peoples, who have not the knowledge 

 of the modern doctor. Even among our own people, whenever remote 

 from the influence of the modern man of medicine, necessity requires 

 that people must and should know something of the ordinary and 

 efficacious remedies that surround them every day. 



The action of the alkaloids and extracts that form the stock in 

 trade of the present-day physician must necessarily differ from the 

 action of the plants from which they are derived because applied to 

 the patient in a different form and manner ; therefore, the known 

 properties of these alkaloids and extracts are not applied to the -plants 

 from which these extracts are taken. The properties listed here are 

 those held for those plants by common repute, and are obtained from 

 all the formularies, dispensaries and pharmacopoeias within reach, 

 without vouching for the accuracy of any. 



The medicinal and therapeutic properties of the plants of Kansas 

 must of necessity differ materially from those of the plants of Europe, 

 grown in an entirely different climate. In addition to this, the num- 

 ber of practitioners who have made a specialty of studying the medici- 

 nal virtues of the plants of this state are very few. Prominent among 

 these are Dr. J. H. Oyster, of Paola, Dr. W. S. Newlon, of Oswego, 

 and Dr. L. E. Sayre, of the State University of Kansas. These gen- 

 tlemen have, from time to time, published lists of the medicinal 

 plants of the state, which lists have been freely consulted by the pres- 



