Preface 9 



indigenous botanic drugs and work up into finished 

 products its crude chemical resources. 



Each country has problems of its own as relates 

 to the collection, cultivation, and pharmaceutical 

 manipulation of its botanic crudes. In the United 

 States the high labor costs militate against compe- 

 tition with countries producing crude botanic rem- 

 edies on a basis of cheap labor. The logical solution 

 of this difficulty is that of skilled propagation, in 

 which strains of medicinal plants will be developed 

 of high proximate principle content and easy ex- 

 traction. These will crowd out of the better markets 

 the rather indifferent quality of crude medicinal 

 plants commonly imported. When this much-to- 

 be-desired consummation is realized, botanic drugs 

 will come into their own again. 



The growing use of alkaloids and other proxi- 

 mates calls for an increased production, and it is 

 probable that chemical houses will be able to use, 

 in alkaloid production, and profitably therein, the 

 ordinary grades of plant crudes, leaving the better 

 grades for the making of tinctures and extracts. 

 This will make a stable market and encourage pro- 

 duction on a large scale. 



As between the empiricism of much which passes 

 muster as "clinical experience," and the dogmatism 

 of the more militant school of laboratory pharma- 

 cologists, much untilled ground lies in the field of 

 botanic remedial agents. This book will make an 

 effort to till that ground, so far as one book may. 



Avoiding the encyclopedic generalizations illus- 

 trated in the multi-remedy plan of China on one 

 hand, and the paucity of resource of the Massachu- 

 setts General Hospital on the other hand, the 



