103 



Writing of the period about 1814, made memorable by the pub- 

 Hcation of Pursh's Flora Auiericae Septentrionalis and Bigelow's 

 Florida Bostonicnsis, Darlington says " Botanical works now be- 

 gan to multiply, in the United States — and the students of ' the 

 amiable science ' found helps in their delightful pursuit, which 

 rendered it vastly more easy and satisfactory than it had been to 

 their predecessors." 



The next botanical undertaking in this city was of the greatest 

 importance in connection with our study, and calls for our par- 

 ticular attention. The successor of Dr. Mitchill as professor of 

 botany and materia medica in Columbia College was Dr. David 

 Hosack, a man of equal breadth and of great strength and energy. 

 His interest in botany was chiefly medical. Most of the amateur 

 botanists of that day were practising physicians, and many, if not 

 most of the professionals had received a medical education and 

 training, so that Dr. Hosack's attitude toward the science was 

 not at the time peculiar. This fact reminds us that outside of 

 the investigation of general and local floras, in their relations to 

 geographical and taxonomic botany, interest then centered chiefly 

 in the medicinal properties and uses of plants. A comparison 

 between this branch of study as then understood and as now con- 

 ducted can be briefly placed before you by stating that most of 

 the plants then regarded as the important medicinal agents have 

 been dismissed by modern medicine, except where it is tram- 

 melled by medical sectarianism. The explanation of their error 

 is not that their results were reached empirically, for this is an 

 excellent method, but that their empirical processes were full of 

 natural sources of error, depending on impressions produced upon 

 unqualified observers, among both patients and practitioners. 

 The chemistry of plants was then practically unknown, whereas 

 it is now the basis of medical botany. Since chemistry consti- 

 tutes at the same time the visible basis of physiology, and phys- 

 iology brings us as close as it is possible for us to get to the life 

 of the plant, it follows that medical botany, while not entitled to 

 the objective position that it held in the days of Hosack, is con- 

 cerned with the same phenomena which engage the attention of 

 the very highest workers in botanical science at the present day. 



