MATERIA MEDICA. 73 



and has been thoroughly supplemented by Messrs. 

 Bentley and Trimen's ' Medicinal Plants/ and the suc- 

 cessive numbers of ' New Commercial Plants ' by 

 Mr. Christy, who has himself done so much to intro- 

 duce new remedies. In these publications all that is 

 of interest to us in the work of Continental pharmacists 

 has been fully reproduced. 



As has already been remarked, the most notable 

 change during the half-century has been the extrac- 

 tion from various drugs of their alkaloids, essential 

 oils, stearoptenes, or other principles, by which means 

 they can be more exactly dispensed. Though Gomes 

 in 1812 obtained a crystalline extract from Cinchona, 

 it was not till 1820 that Pelletier and Caventon 

 separated Quinine from Cinchonine, whilst the sub- 

 sequent researches of Winckler, Pasteur, Hesse, and 

 many others, have added enormously to our practical 

 knowledge of the various alkaloids obtainable from 

 this plant. So, too, nearly all the alkaloids of opium, 

 and, in fact, those of most drugs, have been extracted 

 during the last fifty years, until at the present day 

 their number seems inexhaustible. Since such ex- 

 cellent works as those of Lindley, Fliickiger and 

 Hanbury, and Bentley and Trimeri, are all arranged 

 systematically according to the Natural System of 

 Classification, beginning with the higher Dicotyledo- 

 nous Phanerogams, in the following enumeration and 

 it can be little more than an enumeration the same 

 order will be followed. 



