CHAPTER IX 
THE PLANT AS HEALER 
By ETHEL N. THOMAS, D.Sc. 
NOTWITHSTANDING that the supreme importance of 
the plant’s contribution to human sustenance over- 
shadows even its rdle as healer, the consideration of the 
medical virtue of the plant needs no apology. The 
nation, still less an army, could hardly continue to exist 
if unarmed against the depredation of disease. Of the 
South African War it has been said that the fly -killed 
more than the sword, the disease carrier was more 
effective than the bullet carrier. 
Though, indeed, prevention is better than cure, as 
Peace is better than War, yet peace is not always possible, 
and health is not always possible, so that we dare not 
yet, in either case, despise the weapons of defence. 
Every one is familiar with the wonderful cures effected 
recently in the most devastating form of tropical dysen- 
tery, by means of special preparations of the drug emetin 
obtained from the root of ipecacuanha. The effects 
of quinine, a preparation of cinchona bark, are of such 
importance in the tropics that the Government long 
since arranged that it should be available in small 
quantities at every post office throughout India. Its 
use is so general, that after the failure of coffee in Ceylon 
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