February, 1916.] Annual Address. 



XXIX 



months. The Indian drug, which has for very long retained 



its reputation as the best known remedy for leprosy, is chaul- 



moogra oil, but unfortunately on account of its nauseating 



qualities very few patients can tolerate sufficient doses to do 



more than check in some degree the progress of the affection. 



Dr. Heiser in the Philippine Islands has been injecting it 



into the muscles, and although this is a painful process, some 



of his patients, who persisted with the treatment for some two 



years, have been immensely benefited and a few are said to be 



practically cured. It was at Dr. Heiser's own suggestion that 



I took up work at this subject, and have been endeavour- 



ing to obtain the active principle of the oil in a form suitable 



for hypodermic injections. With the help of Rai Chuni Lai 



Bose Bahadur, I.S.O., Professor of Chemistry at the Medical 



College, I have obtained a product which causes very little 



pain on injection, and appears to have done some good in a 



few cases, as I am recording elsewhere, although it is too 



early to say more at present than that much further work 



is most desirable in this promising field. 



Lastly, I come to the all-important practical question, 

 namely what facilities exist in India and especially in Calcutta 

 tor investigations on these lines ? For a number of years 

 an Indigenous Drugs Committee has existed, but it can safely 

 be said that the results of their labours have been disappointing. 

 It is true that some voluminous reports have been published, 

 a ? d . r shal ! never fo rget my astonishment on perusing one' 

 of the earliest of them, issued a good many years ago, and 

 rinding it to contain numerous routine office letters asking 

 for or acknowledging the receipt of plants or drugs, all solemnly 

 printed to swell the report to respectable dimensions. I have 

 already mentioned the excellent work recently done on cin- 

 chona derivatives by MacGilchrist under the Indian Medical 

 Research Fund of the Government of India, but I do not know 

 of any other such work in recent years in Bengal, although Dr. 

 Hari Nath Ghosh has reported the trial of some indigenous 

 drugs at the Campbell Hospital. Although there is so little 

 to report in the way of progress, I regret to have to call atten- 

 tion to a serious retrogression in one important respect. Up to 

 two years ago we had at the economical section of the Indian 

 Museum in Dr. Hooper, one of the Fellows of this Society, an 

 able and experienced analytical chemist, but on his retirement 

 under the inexorable age rules, his place was not filled, and 

 the unfortunate Indigenous Drugs Committee is now deprived 

 of one of their most valuable and essential workers. On the 



o ad to say that sanction has been accorded on 

 the suggestion of Surgeon-General Harris, I. M.S., for so Ion? 

 Professor of Materia Medica at the Medical College, to the 

 employment in the new laboratories of the School of Tropi- 

 cal Medicine when they are eventually opened at the end of 



