Preface 1 1 



As a medical practitioner of nearly thirty years' 

 experience, it is but natural that the author should 

 stress the evidence derived from the clinical side. 

 Yet notwithstanding this bent of the clinician, one 

 in active practice meets with so many disappoint- 

 ments from drugs in his management of cases of 

 illness, that he comes to welcome and hope for 

 something definite in drug action something em- 

 piric experience fails in giving and that laboratory 

 research alone can supply. 



Yet it must be admitted that, as regards the 

 botanic drugs, there is no considerable volume of 

 laboratory research recorded. Only a few botanic 

 remedies have had adequate pharmacologic study, 

 and even some of this research remains incon- 

 clusive or but partially worked out. So far as may 

 be, the discussion of remedies in this volume will 

 be upon a scientific basis. Wherein such data is 

 not available, the author will call upon clinical lit- 

 erature and his own experience and observation, 

 frankly conceding the errancy liable to mar such 

 methods of conclusion. 



Believing that the proponents of a drug usually 

 overstate the case, and that a multitude of claims 

 regarding its efficacy gradually grow like barnacles 

 upon its literature, this book will present only sifted 

 conclusions. There has been a wonderful accumu- 

 lation of therapeutic junk carried from one book 

 upon materia medica into another one, and so on 

 from book to book. With the best of intention to 

 avoid this irrational method of literary composi- 

 tion, this book will still pass along some of that sort 

 of thing; but, let us hope, a minimum of it. 



No theories, systems or preconceived schemes 



