10 PHARMACAL PLANTS AND THEIR CULTURE. 



tioned therapeutic value, or that they may be grown profitably. Some 

 of the difficulties in the way of profitable culture have already been 

 referred to, the chief one being high-priced American labor versus the 

 cheaper foreign labor. We can no doubt put into operation ways and 

 means which will in a measure overcome this difference in the cost of 

 labor, as the use of time- and labor-saving machinery, improvement in 

 cultural operations, etc. First of all it will be necessary to create an 

 interest in that kind of plant-culture. Such an interest has been created 

 in other countries, notably in England and Germany, where certain 

 medicinal plants are grown on an enormous scale, sufficient to supply 

 the home market at least. Just as we compete successfully or excel in 

 certain branches of horticulture, agriculture, arboriculture, etc., just so 

 may we compete successfully or excel in the growing of medicinal 

 plants. All that is necessary is for enterprising and intelligent indi- 

 viduals to establish plantations of desirable medicinal plants, in suitable 

 localities, growing them on a sufficiently large scale, and putting into 

 operation the appropriate methods of cultivating, collecting, drying, 

 marketing, etc. Beginnings should be made with those drugs which will 

 find a ready market. It must be borne in mind that it is necessary to 

 compete with the foreign market, and that the enterprise should yield a 

 profit equal to that from other soil-cultural pursuits. There is no 

 plausibly apparent reason why this should not be done. If, as the 

 Department of Agriculture suggests, the farmer of the United States 

 may hope to collect medicinal weeds profitably, he will find it certainly 

 even more profitable to devote his entire time and energy to the intel- 

 ligent culture of medicinal plants, whether weeds or not. A few 

 medicinal plants are being cultivated on a large scale in the United 

 States, as the mints in Michigan and Wisconsin, and crocus in Pennsyl- 

 vania. It is affirmed that African senna (Cassia acutifolia) has been 

 successfully grown at Corpus Christi, Texas, and at Washington, D. C. 

 As has been indicated elsewhere, most medicinal plants may be grown 

 in the State. The familiar garden herbs and pot herbs used medicinally 

 and for culinary purposes can certainly be grown successfully, if not 

 profitably. We may also include the mints, pennyroyal, sage, lettuce, 

 yerba santa, thyme, caraway, fennel, coriander, camomile, and many 

 others. There are numerous introduced trees, shrubs, and herbs, in 

 cultivation and escaped from cultivation, which might, no doubt, be 

 grown profitably for medicinal purposes, as the camphor tree, broom, 

 blue gum, and carob. It would, however, seem desirable to begin with 

 a few of the more important, less common, herbaceous drug plants, as 

 aconite, digitalis, rhubarb, belladonna, scopola, hyoscyamus, valerian, 

 veratrum, and others, although there is no plausible reason why such 

 common but nevertheless very desirable drugs, as taraxacum, chicory, 

 mallow, burdock, horehound, milk weed, sambucus, stramonium, absin- 



