HORTICULTURE IN RELATION TO MEDICINE. 



57 



Darjeeling in British Sikkim in 1872. The first cinchona bark was 

 brought into the London market in 1867, and since then this country has 

 been largely supplied with cinchona bark from Ceylon, Ootacamund, and 

 Darjeeling. 



But, to grow cinchona successfully, considerable botanical knowledge 

 and horticultural skill were necessary in order to meet the difficulties of 

 growing the trees, renewing the bark, defeating insect enemies, and collecting 

 and harvesting the bark. An interesting account of the difficulties met 

 with is given in a work published by Dr. (now Sir) George King, K.C.I.E. 



In 1882 the cost of quinine to the Indian Government amounted to 

 £25,000, and for cinchona bark to £7,000. Now the Government can 

 provide as much as is required for Indian use and send the surplus to the 

 London market. 



The cultivation of ipecacuanha has arisen from the same cause as 

 cinchona, viz. the gradual extinction of the plant in districts where it was 

 once plentiful, and the consequent increase in price. Formerly our 

 supplies came chiefly from the provinces of Matto Grosso in Brazil, but 

 now it comes from the province of Minas Geraes. The cultivation of the 

 plant was attempted in India, but though it was found to be easily pro- 

 pagated, almost every part of the plant being capable of yielding young 

 plants, yet its growth was very slow except under the exact conditions it 

 required, and its cultivation did not prove a success. Moreover, the plant 

 is dimorphic, and the different forms of the plant are not identical in 

 vigour of growth. In Selangor, in the Straits Settlements, the exact 

 conditions required by the plant were met with, and a strong strain of 

 the plant was cultivated, with the result that the drug grown from these 

 now arrives regularly in the London market. Here, again, the success is 

 largely due to members of the medical profession, viz. to the experimental 

 cultivation of the plant by Dr. J. H. Balfour at the Edinburgh Botanic 

 Gardens, and to the observation by Dr. Weddell that a fragment of the 

 plant will strike root if allowed to lie on the ground for some time. 



The cultivation of coca leaves in the British Colonies is an outcome 

 of the discovery of the action of cocaine as a local anaesthetic about the 

 year 1876. The rapid demand for this alkaloid caused an immense inquiry 

 for the leaves, and the small quantity of alkaloid obtainable from the 

 imported leaves led to the discovery that the Bolivians kept the fresh 

 coca leaves for their own use and exported the older leaves. In South 

 America the leaves are used to the extent of 30,000,000 lbs. annually, but 

 the native Bolivians will not use them after they have been gathered 

 seven months, or in the coast districts, where the air is moister, after five 

 months. Some little difficulty arose from the fact that more than one 

 species pass under the name of coca leaves, and that one of them contains 

 an alkaloid which possesses injurious properties ; but modern chemistry 

 has solved the difficulty, and crude cocaine is now manufactured at Lima, 

 and purified on arrival in Europe. 



Natives who chew coca leaves to enable them to endure fatigue and 

 hunger invariably chew it with the ash of Chenopodium Quinoa or other 

 plants, or with a little lime, so that the active principle, cocaine, which is 

 an anaesthetic, is thus split up, by the chemical action of the ash or lime, 

 into another body, ecgonine, which has a stimulant action on the heart. 



