lx INTRODUCTION. 



Mr. T. N. Mukerjee and Sir George Watt, who spared no pains 

 to make the Exhibition of indigenous drugs as complete as 

 possible. The Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, 

 originally projected by Mr. Mukherji, but subsequently complet- 

 ed by Dr. G. Watt, contains informations from all possible sour- 

 ces, as to the uses and properties of indigenous drugs. 



IV. 



" The only way to illumine the whole field 01 native thera- 

 peutics," wrote an intelligent foreigner, "is to survey it in 

 small tracts and sift the value of those drugs peculiar to each 

 province There is a wide feeling that there is a bene- 

 ficence in the scheme of nature which provides in every country 

 suitable remedies on the spot for the ill to which humanity is 

 locally most prone. Very little has been done so far to in- 

 corporate in the practice of physicians in the country the 

 medicines which in India nature scatters broadcast from her 

 lap." 



It is necessary to pass in review the principal works which 

 have advanced our knowledge of the subject. In order to do 

 this, we should take into consideration those works which treat 

 of the drugs of the different provinces of this country. In fact, 

 excluding the " Pharmacopoeia of India," the " Pharmacogra- 

 phica Indica" and Watt's " Dictionary of the Economic Products 

 of India," all the works which have made their appearance deal 

 with drugs and medicinal plants of certain provinces only. For 

 obvious reasons this arrangement is a good one.* 



I have already stated the great stimulus that was given to 

 the study of the subject by the establishment of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. Calcutta as till recently the Capital of India 

 possessing one of the finest Botanical gardens in the world afforded 

 great facilities for the study of the subject. Roxburgh, Fleming 

 and Royle were the first to write about the medicinal plants and 

 their uses in the Asiatic Researches and the Journal of the Bengal 

 Asiatic Society. But there was no systematic treatise on the 



* Of the drugs used by the ancient Hindus, the best account in English 

 is the work on Hindu Materia Medica by the late Dr. Udoy Chand Dufct. This 

 work requires re-editing. 



