REPORT ON THE SECTION OF MATERIA MEDICA 

 IN THE U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



By James M. Flint, U. S. Navy, Honorary Curator. 



During the past year the labors of the curator, with such clerical 

 assistance as may have been available or necessary, have been devoted 

 to the identification, arrangement, distribution, illustration, and de- 

 scription of the individual specimens which make up the large mass of 

 material already in hand; to the classification and installation of new 

 material; to the care and convenient arrangement of duplicate and 

 reserve series; and to the consideration of such questions of identity 

 or uses of drugs, as have been referred, from time to time, to this 

 Section. 



The principal accessions have been : A collection (about 30 specimens) 

 of Bast India drugs, received in exchange from the Royal Botanical 

 Gardens, Kew, England, and about 80 specimens of miscellaneous me- 

 dicinal substances contributed by Messrs. W. H. Schieffelin & Co., of 

 New York, to fill vacancies in existing series. Both accessions have 

 been installed and labeled. 



The most important routine work has beeu the preparation of de- 

 scriptive labels, which work has been systematically and persistently 

 carried on during the year. Each label, in its preparation, involves 

 the study of the specimen, the comparison of its physical characters 

 with those laid down by the authorities, the determination of its sources, 

 (geographical, botanical, etc.), and of its supposed medicinal properties 

 and uses. The effort is made to select the most important and inter- 

 esting facts that can be presented in the few lines appropriate to a 

 museum label, avoiding on the one hand that meagerness which 

 gives the inquiring visitor nothing but a name, and, on the other, that 

 fullness of detail which discourages by its length, or confuses by its 

 technical precision. 



Of these labels there have been prepared, printed, and attached to 

 the specimens 2,312, distributed as follows : 



General labels 4 



Class and order labels 103 



Generic labels 31 



Specific labels 1,902 



For botanical figures 218 



For animal figures 17 



For micrographic figures 37 



Manuscript for 284 additional labels is nearly ready. 



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