4 MATERIA MEDICA 



period th3 knowledge at least of indigenous medicinal plants was 

 kept alive and added to in the gardens attached to the convents and 

 monasteries of Central Europe. 



The beginning of the sixteenth century witnessed a revival in the 

 study of drugs, which was stimulated by the discovery of America, 

 of the West Indies, and of the sea route to India. Matthiolus (1501- 

 1577), who studied in Italy, published a commentary on Dioscorides, 

 which enjoyed a great reputation ; he also collected and dried plants 

 for pharmacognostical purposes and prepared careful illustrations. 

 Monardes (1493-1578) collected drugs and other products brought 

 from America, forming thus what was probably the first museum 

 of materia medica. Clusius (1526-1609) also collected drugs from 

 drug merchants and examined them ; his ' Rarium Plantarum 

 Historia ' (1601) contains no fewer than 1,146 illustrations, many of 

 which are of great excellence. 



After the lapse of a considerable time, during which little of note 

 was published, Pomet wrote his excellent and well-illustrated ' Histoire 

 Generale des Drogues ' (Paris, 1694), which was closely followed 

 by Lemery's * Traite Universel des Drogues Simples ' (Paris, 1697) 

 and ' Dictionnaire des Drogues Simples' (4th ed., Paris, 1727), and 

 later by Geoffrey's ' Tractatus de Materia Medica ' (Paris, 1741). 



The period of modern pharmacognosy may be said to open with 

 Guibourt's admirable ' Histoire Abregee des Drogues Simples ' 

 (Paris, 1820), of which several editions were published. Guibourt 

 relied largely on his own observations, and treated the subject from 

 a purely pharmacognostical point of view. This was not the case 

 with Pereira, whose classical ' Elements of Materia Medica and 

 Therapeutics ' (London, 1839) embraced, as its title indicates, both 

 pharmacognosy and therapeutics. Schleiden was the first to employ 

 the microscope to distinguish drugs by differences in their structure, 

 a departure which was rapidly advanced by Berg and Schmidt 

 (' Anatomischer Atlas,' Berlin, 1865), Vogl, and Moeller. Hanbury 

 studied chiefly the botany aud commerce of drugs, while Fliickiger 

 devoted himself chiefly to the chemistry and history, the collaboration 

 of these two celebrated pharmacognosists resulting in the publication 

 of the classical * Pharmacographia ' (London, 1874). Meyer (' Wissen- 

 schaftliche Droguen-Kunde,' Berlin, 1891) followed the. morphological 

 development of drugs, Tschirch (' Anatomischer Atlas,' Leipzig, 

 1900) their structural development, and E. M. Holmes their botanical 

 origin. 



By these and other workers a mass of material has been accumu- 

 lated, the systematical arrangement of which has been attempted by 

 Tschirch in his 'Handbuch der Pharmakognosie.' 



Commerce. The oldest records of commercial intercourse between 

 different peoples indicate that several thousand years before the 



