L 



EFFECT OF COCAINE OX THE GROWTH OF LUPINUS 



ALBUS. A CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMPARATIVE 



PHARMACOLOGY OF ANIMAL AND 



PLANT PROTOPLASM. 



By DAVID I. MACHT and MARGUERITE B. LIVINGSTON. 



(From the Department of Pharmacology and the Laboratory of Plant Physiology, 

 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.) 



(Received for publication, March 7, 1922.) 

 INTRODUCTION. 



The effects of chemicals on plants have in some respects been 

 studied very thoroughly and in other respects almost not at all. 

 Those drugs or chemicals which have been intensively investigated 

 in this connection are the various salts or more accurately speaking 

 ions which are necessary for the nutrition of various plants. The 

 vast amount of work in plant physiology which has been done on this 

 subject of plant nutrition and plant metabohsm has been probably 

 more thorough than the analogous observations on animals. At 

 any rate the plant physiologist is able to produce a more perfect nu- 

 tritive solution for the growth of plants than the animal physiologist 

 can for the study of animal organs or tissues. While this phase of 

 plant chemistry has received all the attention demanded by its im- 

 portance, the influence of other chemicals or drugs and poisons on plant 

 life has been barely touched upon. Yet the few contributions along 

 these lines which have appeared, emphasize its importance. If we 

 define pharmacology ' as some authors do, as " . . . . the study of 

 the changes induced in hving organisms by the administration in a state 

 of minute division of such substances as do not act merely as foods" 

 then the field of what we might term phyto-pharmacology is virgin soil. 

 The effects of drugs or poisons on plants have been very little studied. 

 The drugs which have perhaps received slightly more attention in tliis 



■ Cushny, A. R., A textbook of pharmacology and therapeutics or the action 

 of drugs in health and disease, Philadelphia and New York, 4th edition, 1906. 



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