Some Notes Beg ar ding South African Pharmacology. 113 



consists, we may, by judiciously employing that poison at the right 

 juncture, counteract opposing forces which are threatening to destroy 

 life. We may, however, have the remedy for the disease at our very 

 door, and, through want of knowledge, fail to apply it. Hence the 

 need of the scientific research to which Dr. Pappe alluded fifty years 

 ago. We can scarcely take up a periodical bearing on medical 

 science without coming across records of investigations in regard to 

 new drugs ; some of these investigations are physiological, searching 

 out information respecting the action of the drug on living animals 

 or human beings ; others are chemical, and aim at discovering the 

 inherent nature of the active principle itself and its relation to 

 other known substances. That there is an immense field for 

 research in connection with the poisonous, and possibly medicinal 

 plants indigenous to this sub-continent must be patent to every one 

 who has even touched the fringe of the subject ; but while there is 

 this wealth of information ready to be worked, it lies latent for want 

 of workers. 



An entire century has passed since its present possessors entered 

 upon occupation of this land, and, to our discredit be it said, the 

 aboriginal native to-day still knows more about the value of some of 

 our indigenous medicinal plants than we do, and all the appreciation 

 that we show is to clap him into prison if, in his excess of zeal, 

 untempered by the culture which we possess but decline to use, he 

 gives his patient too large a dose, and so kills where he intended to 

 cure. In other colonies it has not been the habit to pause so that 

 the sons of Ham may lead the way of knowledge. Had the 

 Spaniards acted upon this principle, that valuable drug quinine 

 would have been unknown as one of our most important febrifuges. 

 There is no evidence that the Indians knew the value of Peruvian 

 bark before the Spaniards colonised their country. It was left for 

 the colonists to exploit it. With us the native scientist — pardon the 

 term! — has led the van, and, notwithstanding the wilderness cry of 

 Pappe, and its later echo by Andrew Smith, we have not yet con- 

 sidered the trail worth following up. For over fifteen years there has 

 been a Government Analytical Laboratory in existence, but even that 

 institution has not had the opportunity of advancing the subject 

 much further, for the investigations of the Government analysts 

 have been limited to attempts to identify the drugs when the over- 

 zealous Kaffir doctor has been indicted for culpable homicide. It is 

 not from that point that the matter should be approached ; it is 

 not consonant with the dignity of a scientific investigation of so 

 important a nature that it should be grudged the expenditure of any 

 time and labour other than that casually bestowed upon it as the 



