xl INTRODUCTION. 



tested all the organs of the animal body, will return to the 

 most ancient remedies of mankind, to the medicinal plants and 

 drugs, for the utility of which the experience of the thousands 

 of years vouches." 



There were other medical men also who were comiDg 

 to look upon drugs of synthetical origin acting upon the 

 system as foreign bodies, depressing and paralysing its func- 

 tions. Bat according to them such was not the case with 

 the drugs of vegetable origin which in their natural combina- 

 tion meet nutritional conditions of the system. The possibilities 

 and potentialities of medicinal plants and vegetable drugs have 

 not been as yet properly and fully studied. In an article on 

 " the teaching of chemical medicine," in the British Medical 

 Jurnal of 3rd January, 1914, Dr. Mackenzie wrote that : — 



" Not one single drug has been carefully studied so as to 

 understand its full effects on the human system, effects that 

 could be easily recognised had a systematic examination been 

 carried out when it was administered in the hospital wards. " 



The above observation of Dr, Mackenzie is fully borne out by 

 what Dr. Charles J. Macalister, M.D., F.R.C.P. has discovered, 

 as reported in the British MedicalJournal of January 6, 1912, in 

 Symphytum officinale, a plant known as " comfrey " in England. 

 He considers it as a "potent cell proliferant." It was a long 

 forgotten remedy which was used in olden times to heal ulcers. 

 On analysis, the root of the plant was found to contain allantione 

 to which Dr. Macalister attributed its action as a potent cell 

 proliferant. 



Dr. William Bramwell, M.A., M.D., B. Ch., of Liverpool, 

 concluded a note on the above-named plant published in the same 

 issue of the British Medical Jurnal in the following significant 

 words. 



" It is indeed refreshing and gratifying, in these days of 

 serums and vaccines and highly complicated preparations, the 

 administration of which, in some cases, is fraught with the 

 gravest possible danger and soul-harrowing anxiety on the part 

 of the administrator, to find a physician of Dr. Macalister's stan- 

 ding setting on foot the investigation of so simple and natural 

 a remedy as common comfrey." 



