Botanic Remedies 279 



Synthetic resorcin is one answer to this. If the 

 organic and synthetic chemist is only given a chance, 

 Dr. Scott's prognostication will doubtless come true. 

 And then, after the "vegetable remedies" come out 

 of a retort, the "ductless gland extracts" will also 

 be made synthetically and will lose out in profes- 

 sional esteem, and the "Pharmacopeia" become an 

 appendix of the trade lists of the manufacturers 

 of explosives and dyestuffs, and "official remedies" 

 be listed under "By-products." 



Doubtless Dr. Scott would not list as "constitu- 

 ents of the flesh and blood" such agents as mercury, 

 silver, gold, bismuth, bromine, copper, magnesium, 

 manganese, lead, and zinc, yet they are useful 

 remedies; he would hardly claim that chemically 

 made glucose, or benzosulphinide (saccharin) are as 

 available as food as is natural sugar; and he must 

 admit that all drugs, except food-drugs, are "foreign 

 to the animal system," even the ductless-gland 

 extracts from the sheep or other of the lower animals 

 being foreign to the system of man. Bacteria and 

 tapeworms are also foreign; and how is one to meet 

 the indications they precipitate unless with some 

 "foreign" substance? Let us keep our plant remedies 

 natural instead of synthetic, and credit the work 

 of the organic chemist on its own status useful, 

 but productive of remedies also "foreign to the 

 animal system." 



RHEUM 



RHUBARB, Rheum species, universally official. R. 

 offidnale is a common designation. These their 

 several species are CHINESE RHUBARB. R. Rha- 

 ponticum, official in France and Mexico, is EUROPEAN 

 RHUBARB. 



