936 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1096 



spective physician. As prospective pharma- 

 cist, the student of pharmacognosy wants to 

 know that cinchona is a febrifuge, but he 

 should know primarily what alkaloids are 

 contained in cinchona bark and should have 

 experience in the chemical assay for total 

 alkaloids as well as for quinine. He should 

 be posted on the botanical characteristics, both 

 macroscopic and microscopic, of the drug and 

 learn how to make the medicinal preparations 

 and the reasons for a given method of prep- 

 aration. Thus the students of medicine and 

 pharmacy, in studying the same subject- 

 matter, should have their subject presented 

 from supplementary, not identical, viewpoints, 

 so that later, as medical and pharmaceutical 

 practitioners, their combined knowledge and 

 experience may prove to the greater advantage 

 of suffering mankind. 



Both classes of students, however, should 

 get something more than mere technical in- 

 formation out of these two cotu:ses. The men- 

 tal discipline that should come from all scien- 

 tific study should not be denied them. More- 

 over, the humanizing aspect should receive due 

 attention. This is particularly true of the 

 study of pharmacognosy. Possibly no science 

 touches mankind at more points than does 

 pharmacognosy. From the crude drug bale, 

 with its interesting commercial history and 

 even romance, to the working out of the struc- 

 ture of its physiologically active organic con- 

 stituent and its administration, so many phases 

 of human activity are involved that pharma- 

 cognosy may be regarded as one of the best 

 examples of what may possibly be designated 

 the modern scientific humanities. 



In his Phi Beta Kappa address at Johns 

 Hopkins the editor of Science made the fol- 

 lowing statement: 



That education is liberal wMcli enlarges the 

 sympathies and emphasizes our common interests, 

 not that which forms an exclusive clique. On the 

 whole the sciences in their application to human 

 life seem more likely to form an adequate basis 

 for a common culture than the dead languages. 



This is certainly true of pharmacognosy. 

 Teachers of history have gone beyond the mere 

 history of wars and warring dynasties, they 

 have even gone beyond the history of institu- 



tions and are touching upon certain phases of 

 art as expressions of the evolution of man, but 

 possibly not one has realized that the revolu- 

 tion in chemistry, brought about by Lavoisier, 

 was possibly as important to mankind as the 

 French political revolution, as a victim of 

 which the great scientist was guillotined. 

 Plueckiger was possibly the first to emphasize 

 the humanizing aspects of pharmacognosy. 

 In his "Handbuch der Pharmacognosie," 

 Tschirch carried out the ideas of his master 

 in word and picture, as might be expected of 

 an artist of the camera as well as of the pen. 



Compared with the masterpiece of the en- 

 thusiast in Bern, Henry EJraemer's " Scientific 

 and Applied Pharmacognosy " falls short to 

 such an extent that the two are not to be re- 

 garded in the same class either as to scope or 

 as to execution. One grave mistake, however, 

 which Tschirch made, Kraemer has avoided. 

 Though Tschirch had been teaching phar- 

 macognosy for a life time from the point of 

 view of the botanist, when it came to the pub- 

 lication of his manuscript he adopted a chem- 

 ical basis of classification of the material. 

 Thus the attempt to place his work on what he 

 apparently regarded a more scientific basis re- 

 sulted in pseudo-science. Kraemer more for- 

 tunately arranges his material according to 

 families. 



A detailed criticism of a work like this does 

 not seem called for in a journal like Science. 

 Errors of statement can, no doubt, be foimd 

 by any specialist who looks for them in his 

 particular field. If the reader of this review 

 wiU take the trouble to compare the text- and 

 handbook under consideration with Tschirch'a 

 " Handbuch," still in the process of appearing 

 in Lieferungen, he need not be told why the 

 German masterpiece would not do as a text- 

 book ; nor need the inferiority in text, illustra- 

 tion and general make-up of the new American 

 text be pointed out. One point, however, is 

 noteworthy as a curious omission. Among the 

 works consulted, the author in his preface does 

 not even mention Tschirch, or his predecessors 

 Plueckiger and Hanbury. While, so far as 

 illustrations are concerned, the author has ap- 

 parently endeavored to impart to his treatise 



