PREFACE. 



Commissioned by His Majesty's Government to study the 

 medicinal plants of my native country, I returned there and 

 spent two years in collecting data regarding the use that the 

 Filipinos make of their plants in the treatment of disease. 

 At the same time I collected and carefully preserved some 

 with the purpose of taking them to Europe, to study their 

 chemical composition in the laboratories of Paris under the direc- 

 tion of the eminent men who had been my instructors in medicine. 



The work I did in the Philippines was preliminary, a prepa- 

 ration for the more extended study of the subject which I 

 wished to make in Paris, where I went with my notes and col- 

 lection. Unfortunately, upon leaving Manila, I confided the 

 mounting and pressing of my plants to an inexperienced person 

 who stupidly placed in the midst of them several succulent 

 tubers which decomposed during the voyage and spoiled the 

 other plants. At the same time I received in Paris an im- 

 portant collection of the vegetable drugs of the Philippines, 

 sent by my friend the pharmacist, M. Rosedo Garcia, and des- 

 tined for the World's Fair of 1889. I opened with great 

 pleasure the wood and zinc box in which the collection came, 

 anticipating that I should be able to carry out my plan of 

 study and at the same time win for my friend, Garcia, a well- 

 deserved premium. Imagine my disappointment upon finding 

 that, by an unfortunate coincidence, his plants had arrived in 

 the same condition as mine, having also been packed with 

 tubers of ubi, gabi, etc., and several cocoanuts which had de- 

 composed. 



Many times since then I have tried to obtain from Manila, 

 through exchange or payment of money, a similar collection, 

 but have been unable to secure a single leaf of the plants I so 



vii 



