DEC 3 1914 



Division of Forestry 

 University of Califorur 



MEDICINAL AND POISONOUS PLANTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



1. Introduction. The United States pays about eighteen million 

 dollars annually for imported vegetable drugs. Some of these are from 

 tropical countries and can not be grown within the bounds of our 

 native country, but the majority of plants used in medicine, which have 

 been imported heretofore, might readily be cultivated in the United 

 States. Furthermore, there is a steadily increasing shortage of wild- 

 growing, native, medicinal plants. Sooner or later these must be culti- 

 vated to prevent extermination or paucity. It is also a fact that the 

 foreign supply of vegetable drugs is extremely uncertain and variable, 

 both as to quality and quantity, conditions which can be corrected by 

 growing drugs of first quality at home. 



That medicinal plants may be grown profitably has been proven by 

 the several isolated attempts in widely-separated areas of the United 

 States. The following suggestions are intended to serve as stimulus, 

 as well as a guide, to those interested in the cultivation of medicinal 

 plants, primarily in California, also in other states. 



AVithin recent years the .pharmaceutical press has published reports 

 on the scarcity of certain drugs, as belladonna, hyoscyamus, hydrastis, 

 senega, and others. Some anxiety begins to arise concerning the future 

 supply of cascara bark. 



The present tendency in medical and pharmaceutical botany is toward 

 greater simplification. The number and variety of plants now used 

 medicinally is very small when compared with the number used in the 

 ]>;ist, and the process of "weeding out" is still going on, as is shown by 

 the fact that in the eighth decennial revision of the United States Phar- 

 macopoeia about forty crude vegetable drugs were excluded, while only 

 three or four new ones were admitted. This process of reducing the 

 number of vegetable drugs does not, however, imply that the importance 

 of studying new and old medicinal plants is correspondingly lessened. 

 Rather the reverse is true. Botanists, chemists, physiologists, and phar- 

 macologists must extend their investigations into fields still unknown or 

 imperfectly understood. There is, for example, much uncertainty as to 

 the identity, origin, and physiological action of many long-used vegre- 



