August 12, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



91 



and reindeer are well known ; still more remarkable are those 

 from the Kessler hole, near Sehaffhausen, in Switzerland. 

 A sketch of a reindeer feeding, now in the Eosgarten 

 Museum, Constance, and one of a horse, in the Sehaffhausen 

 Museum, both from this locality, are so true to nature that 

 one is surprised that they could have been drawn by a per- 

 son not regularly instructed. Yet the draughtsman lived 

 at a time when the Linth glacier covered the site of the 

 present city of Zurich, and the musk-ox and reindeer pas- 

 tured where now grow the vineyards of the Rhine. 



Several curiously inscribed stones and shells have within 

 the last few years been found in the eastern United States, 

 regarded by their owners as the work of aboriginal artists. 

 Two of them represent the mammoth; others, scenes from 

 life, as battles. While not to be rejected at once, grave sus- 

 picion attaches to all such for obvious reasons, the first of 

 which is the constant recurrence of frauds in American an- 

 tiques. There is now no doubt that Professor Wright was 

 deceived in the small terracotta image from a great depth in 

 Montana which he described ; and it is very easy for an en- 

 thusiast to fall into such snares. 



An Aboriginal Pile-Structure. 



A late issue of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology is a 

 report upon pile-structures in Naaman's Creek, near Clay- 

 mont, DelavT^are, by Dr. Hilborne T. Cresson. It "will be 

 remembered that in Science, Vol. XV., p. 116, etc., there 

 was a correspondence on the character of the structure which 

 these pile-remains indicated. The facts as set forth in the 

 pamphlet now published show that at the mouth of Naaman's 

 Creek three groups of pile-huts were discovered, in a line 

 running from north to south across the creek. In the im- 

 mediate vicinity, at various depths in the mud and gravel, 

 about 700 stone implements were found, some quite rude, of 

 argillite, others highly finished, of jasper, slate, quartz, etc. 



As the mouth of the creek where it falls into the river was 

 evidently a favorable camping and fishing ground for the 

 natives, these implements might reasonably have been ex- 

 pected in such a locality. Was their presence in any way 

 related to that of the piles ? Dr. Cresson conjectures that 

 the piles originally formed native fish-weirs. It may be so, 

 but a careful study of the plans which he furnishes, and an 

 inspection of the piles themselves at Cambridge, lead me to 

 think they were intended as supports for some structure 

 which rested upon them. Were they the rude piers of some 

 early Swedish bridge across the creek ? Were they the 

 abutmentsof an ancient wharf? Were they the foundations 

 of dwellings ? The average size of the groups, about 12 by 

 6 feet, would answer the requirements of the latter theory; 

 and paleflttes were by no means unknown among the Ameri- 

 can aborigines. 



MEDICAL BOTANY. 



BY CHARLES FREDERICK MILLSPATJGH, M.D. 



In looking over the prospectuses of the various medical 

 colleges of the United States, one fails to find in a great ma- 

 jority of them anything to indicate that the important sub- 

 ject of medical botany is taught One wonders at the apathy 

 of medical institutions in this respect when pausing to con- 

 sider the fact that seven-tenths of the drugs in general use 

 have a vegetable origin, and an action upon the animal 

 economy analogous to their botanical relationship. 



I fully agree with Professor Barnes^ in his statement that, 

 to the general public (and I am sorry to add, to the average 

 J Science, Vol. XX., page 62. 



Board of Instruction as well), the first thought arising to 

 the mind when botany or botanist is mentioned, is a vague 

 picture of "a sort of harmless crank," wandering about 

 fields, woods, and bogs, picking insignificant weeds and car- 

 rying them home, principally to tear them in pieces when he 

 gets there. I urge, with the professor, the necessity of mod- 

 ernizing botanical instruction in colleges and normals, and 

 would add to the list pharmaceutical and medical institu- 

 tions. Examine the text-books on materia medica used in 

 these latter institutions, and what do you find ? Simply an 

 alphabetical arrangement of drugs. This does not meet the 

 needs of the subject treated, for a student should be trained 

 to study drugs in accordance with their analogy to other 

 drugs, and not according to their indexial position in a lan- 

 guage. In order to do this he must have, not a rudimentary 

 knowledge of botany and vegetable chemistry, but a thor- 

 ough and systematic attainment of the subject, not only as 

 represented by the flora of the campus and surrounding 

 woods and fields, but of the world at large. Upon opening 

 these actual text-books we shall find atropine, aninflamatory 

 poison, preceded by aspidium, an anthelmintic, and followed 

 by aurantia, a simple carminative, none of these bearing the 

 least rational relation to the others. An index would have 

 found these drugs readily, while their disposal in this man- 

 ner will teach the student nothing, nor will it in the least 

 assist his memory to retain the uses of them. 



Drugs of botanical origin are as closely allied to each 

 other medically as the plants from which they are derived 

 are botanically; therefore in the above illustration atropine 

 should have been preceded by stramonium and followed by 

 hyoscyamus. Again genera and families of plants have 

 true and constant familial and generic drug action, and the 

 individual species of these have idiosyncracies of action pe- 

 culiar to themselves. To continue the same illustration, 

 belladonna and atropa, with their atropa atropine; stra- 

 monium, with its datura-atropine; and hyoscyamus, with 

 its hyoscyamine; together with other Solanaceae — to which 

 botanical family they belong — all cause delirium, but its 

 character differs in each drug; they all dilate the pupil, but 

 the expression of the face under the dilation is dissimilar; 

 they all cause spasmodic action, but the spasms are varied ; 

 and among other symptoms they all cause an eruption of the 

 skin, but in each case the eruptions may be readily distin- 

 guished. This study may be carried through the whole 

 range of the drug action, not only in the family here pre- 

 sented, but through the whole natural plant system as well. 

 This being true, should not the medical student's first train- 

 ing in materia medica be a thorough course in systematic 

 botany ? 



Pure science in the collegiate study of drugs has of late 

 been set aside for the greater study of the less useful ques- 

 tions of etiology and diagnosis. Of what immediate care to 

 the patient are hours of scientific and exhaustive guesswork 

 as to what caused him to be ill, when he knows that this is 

 followed by but a moment's thought expended upon the 

 more vital question of what drug should be employed to 

 make him well again ? Take up the first medical magazine 

 at your hand; in it you will doubtless find a long disserta- 

 tion upon some case in practice. Column after column 

 will be found to be devoted to the elucidation of points of 

 diagnosis and etiology, and suppositions, perhaps, of bac- 

 terial invasion and cell disintegration, then a line or two to 

 therapy, then the post mortem. 



Careful, comprehensive, differential, and comparative 

 study of botany and vegetable chemistry in their relation to 



