CHAPTER X. 



MEDICINAL WEEDS OF IOWA. 



In the United States, the raising of drug plants has never re- 

 ceived the commercial attention that has been devoted to this 

 branch of agriculture abroad. As a result, we are importing 

 regularly for the drug trade thousands of pounds of dried plants 

 that might be raised in this country. Among them are many 

 weeds, as, quack grass and mustard that, to us, are pests to be 

 eradicated as quickly as possible. Not that it would be wise to 

 devote good agricultural land to raising medicinal weeds but as 

 by-products these are of value. The word "weed" is used ad- 

 visedly; for, while many of our vegetable drugs come from plants 

 which in this country are not weeds, it is undoubtedly true that 

 many drug plants are noxious weeds in the country in which they 

 were first applied medicinally. This is illustrated by such weeds 

 as quack grass, the mustards, the docks, tansy, and dandelion, all 

 of which are official in the U. S. P. 



As early as the days of Dioscorides the physician was the 

 herbalist, and his knowledge of the active principles of plants was 

 his stock in trade. Among semi-civilized and barbarous peoples 

 the same thing is true today. 



While very many of the plants formerly considered medicinal 

 are at present discredited, a sufficient number remains to make 

 raising drug plants a profitable industry. 



The literature of medical botany, if we include the "Herballs" 

 is quite voluminous. In Germany, in 1787, Schoepf published the 

 "Materia medica americana, potissimum regni vegetabilis" in 

 which he listed three hundred and sixty medicinal plants which he 

 had collected among the American Indians; but he stated that 

 there were actually over seven hundred in use. Between 1817 and 

 1821 Jacob Bigelow published three volumes of the "American 

 Medical Botany; being a collection of the native medical plants 

 of the U. S." in which he listed fifty plants, each illustrated by 

 colored plates. William Barton, about the same time, published 

 "Vegetable materia medica of the U. S. ; or medical botany contain- 

 ing a botanical, general, and medical history of medicinal plants 



