INTRODUCTION. lxiii 



Products of Bombay,'' published in 1862, was the first work that 

 gave a systematic account of the Bombay drugs. In the 

 Pharmacopoeia of India published in 1867, the Bombay drugs 

 were not adequately represented. But since then, due princi- 

 pally to the labors of Sakharam Arjun and Dymock, the 

 Bombay drugs have been far better worked out than those of 

 any other part of India. Sakharam Arjun's " Bombay Drugs " 

 was published in 1879. He was a skilled botanist, being the 

 occupant of the Chair of Botany in the Grant Medical College. 

 This publication was intended to serve as a catalogue of the 

 Indian drugs in the Museum of the Royal Victoria Hospital at 

 Netley. Dr. Sakharam Arjun succeeded in correctly identifying 

 some of the bazar drugs and brought to the notice of the 

 profession a good many medicinal plants used by the natives 

 of Bombay. 



Dymock 's " Vegetable Materia Medica of Western India" 

 is by far the best work on the indigenous drugs, not only of 

 Bombay, but of India generally. It bears strong testimony to 

 his having patiently worked at the subject for a large number 

 of years. The Pharmacographica Indim will remain, for many 

 years to come, the standard work of reference on indigenous 

 drugs. 



The medicinal plants and drugs of Sind have not yet been 

 properly studied. The only work on the subject is that of 

 Murray on " Plants and Drugs of Sind." Murray, neither being 

 a medical man nor a skilled botanist, compiled his work from 

 other sources and, as such, the work is of doubtful value as a 

 guide to the plants and drugs of that province. 



Our knowledge of the medicinal plants and drugs of the 

 Punjab is also scant and meagre. Honnigberger's work named 

 " Thirty-five years in the East " was the first one mentioning 

 the Punjab medicinal plants and drugs. Honnigberger was a 

 homoeopathic practitioner and was physician to Ran jit Singh. 

 The work is hardly of any value, and is very seldom referred 

 to now-a-days. 



The Punjab Exhibition of 1864 brought for the first time 

 to light the drugs of that province. Mr. Baden Powell described 



