Pharmacology 55 



BOTANIC DRUG STANDARDIZATION 



Theophrastus and Dioscorides were the first to 

 begin the pharmacognostic standardization of me- 

 dicinal plants; and Hildegard, Albertus Magnus, 

 and the Arab writers built upon that foundation. 

 By the nineteenth century pharmacognosy was a 

 dead issue, until revived by Flukiger, Hamburg, 

 and a few others; but more recently Pomet, Geoffrey, 

 Berg, Tschirch, Kraemer, Schlotterbeck, and Rusby 

 have advanced it wonderfully. Pharmaco-anatomy 

 was the beginning, and pharmaco-physiology fol- 

 lowed and is but partially developed. But it prom- 

 ises very much in the practical matter of so culti- 

 vating medicinal plants as to increase their standard 

 of medicinal content. 



In Java the Dutch have produced cinchona bark 

 yielding 16 per cent of quinine, an immense increase. 

 By cultivation, beets are made to yield 16 per cent 

 of sugar. Tschirch developed the production of 

 resinoids in the forests of Berne, and drug firms in 

 the United States have produced an increased yield 

 of alkaloid content in certain medicinal plants. 4 



If pharmacology had accomplished nothing else, 

 it were well justified in its development of methods 

 of drug standardization. Stewart has been an 

 aggressive worker in this line, and he read a paper 5 

 before the American Therapeutic Society at its 

 session in Montreal, 1912. Some of the following 

 data is from that paper. 



Definition in the character of botanic drugs has 



4 "The Cultivation of Medicinal Plants," The Lilly Scientific Bulle- 

 tin, series 1, Number 7, March, 1916. 



'"Modern Methods of Drug Standardization," F. E. Stewart, 

 Monthly Cyclopedia and Medical Bulletin, Jan., Feb., Mar., 1913. 



