20 FUNDAMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS 



mination of their uses, including the principles (but not the practice) 

 of their preparation as based upon such facts, and their classification in 

 view of medical considerations. 



Pharmaceutical Botany. — In its widest scope. Pharmaceutical Botany 

 would include the classification, phytography, histology, distribution 

 and culture of medicinal plants, and the collection, preservation, 

 packing, transport, commerce, identification and selection, composition, 

 and methods and processes of preparation for use of the drugs derived 

 from them. From this it would follow that the pursuit of pharmaceu- 

 tical botany would demand a thorough knowledge of nearly all depart- 

 ments of scientific botany. This conclusion is to be modified, in view 

 of existing conditions, in important directions. The pursuit of the 

 study to such an extent would almost necessarily involve the average 

 pharmacist, at least in this country, in financial failure, through the 

 inattention to practical affairs which would ensue. It is the peculiar 

 office of the teacher of technical science to place its practical benefits 

 within the reach of his students, while relieving them from attention 

 to the greater portion of the field. It is not to be overlooked, however, 

 that while such a process of extensive exclusion is possible, utility 

 requires that a corresponding degree of elaboration shall be attained 

 in special directions. The faithful teacher, moreover, will not refrain 

 from urging as liberal an indulgence in extra-utilitarian study as indi- 

 vidual circumstances will properly permit. The directions in which 

 botanical knowledge is most useful to practising pharmacists will 

 determine the most important requirements for botanical study. 



Pharmacognosy. — The identification, valuation, and selection of drugs 

 — that is to say, Pharmacognosy — constitute the principal field for the 

 exercise of botanical knowledge on the part of the pharmacist. 



It is convenient to divide botanical pharmacognosy, like vegetable 

 anatomy, into gross and minute, the latter concerning itself with those 

 characters which require the compound microscope for their demon- 

 stration. 



Subjects Essential to Pharmacognosy. — Remembering that vegetable 

 drugs may consist of the entire plant or of any one or more parts thereof, 

 and that they may reach the pharmacist in any condition, from that of 

 unbroken, or even fresh, to that of a fine powder, the departments of 

 botany necessarily pertaining to pharmacognosy and materia medica 

 will appear as follows: A knowledge of classification or systematic 

 botany, while a prime necessity in medical botany, there being a distinct 

 co-relation between natural classification and medicinal value, is one 



