Inaugural Address. ol 
eye been casually cast upon the heap, would have been both 
sold and bought for conium; and had an extract, or tincture, 
or powder of its leaves been used, how disastrous might have 
been the result. This is nota solitary instance; such mistakes 
are unfortunately still too common: but henceforth they can less 
easily escape detection, since a knowledge of botany has been 
made a necessarily integral part of every medical education. 
Indeed, much as we may value the labours and researches of 
the physician and the chemist who investigate the medicinal 
roperties and constituent principles of plants, the labours of 
an 34 would be often of no avail, did not the botanist aid them 
in determining, by constant and decided characters, the very 
plants in which such principles are found, and to which such 
properties belong; as well as in what situation and under what 
circumstances they should grow, at what seasons and in what 
states they should be collected; for all these will often much 
affect their potency and value: e. g. how different is the Apium 
graveolens growing in the light to the same plant when ex- 
cluded from its access? how importantly does a wet or a dry 
situation affect the character of many umbelliferous plants; 
for the dry soil which increases the aromatic properties of 
some, diminishes the essential powers of others, while the wet 
situations which impair the aroma of these, enable those to 
eliminate to the full their active poisons. Again: many 
plants similar or nearly so, and which are frequently undis- 
tinguishable to a non-botanic eye, often possess very different 
properties: thus, to take only the most common and familiar 
cases, how important it is to distinguish Aithusa Cynapium 
from the true culinary parsley, the Lolium temulentum from 
other grasses, and so forth. Thus, how vainly should we 
seek in Cichorium Intybus for the hepatic influence of 
Leontodon ‘Taraxacum; and yet, to superficial observers, so 
similar in their early states are these two very distinct plants, 
that they are being continually and constantly mistaken for 
each other; in fact, they form the pons asinorum of all incep- 
tor candidates for botanic fame. 
But I feel that it would be here a work of supererogation 
to illustrate more fully the utter practical inutility of many of 
the researches of the physician and the chemist, without the 
botanist would labour with them. What avails it that the 
physician knows that opium brings sleep, lulls pain, and stays 
the approach of many ills; that Peruvian bark cures ague; that 
jalap and scammony are drastic, and rhubarb a tonic astrin- 
gent purge? What avails it that the chemist by analysis can 
prove that the sedative principle of opium is morphia, the 
tonic of cinchona, quinine ; or what pa it that he proclaims 
