THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
105 
cians. We have but to look to our own country to find the names 
of Torrey, Gray, En^ehnann and Goodale. All these men started 
as doctors and, for one cause or another, drifted into the sister 
science. Army and Navy surgeons not a few, as a relief perhaps 
to the tedium of g"arrison or ship duty, have taken to botany or 
kindred science. Note such names of Elliott Coues and Valery 
Havard. 
Granted that botany is of use to the physician, on what grounds 
do we base the claim ? One strong reason for at least a rudimen- 
tary knowledo:e, is that one can here best study the organic cell in 
its simpler and afterwards in its more complex combination. 
Essential microscopic technique is at the same time acquired. 
Then again, all about us, in air and water, in our food, every- 
where in fact, prevail microscopic organisms, many of them po- 
tent and insidious causes of disease. I have only to point out that 
bacteria are plants, to show how important it is to know something 
of their structure and life history. 
I sometimes fancy that when a physician remarks that botany 
is of no use, he is thinking of the old style botany, mere analysis, 
so-called. If our study led only to the dry facts of systematic ar- 
rangement, non-vitalized by the story of the plant's life and re- 
lations, I should vote with him in regard to the waste of time 
s[ent in the pursuit. Nowadays we hope to have reformed this 
altogether. 
The student learns to recognize certain medicinal plants, their 
affinities, properties and derivatives. He learns also from men- 
tal deduction to expect certain qualities for good or evil in definite 
groups or orders of plants, and knowing these tendencies or fixed 
characters, ever looks for them when these plants occur. 
Thus in Papaveraceal he expects norcotics akin to opium ; in 
Solanaceae such alkaloids as atropine or nicotine, daturine, or hy- 
oscyamine; in Umhelliferae acute poisons, like conium, aethusa 
and cicuta, drugs like assafoetida; in Enphorhiaceae irritants 
or purgatives, like croton or castor oil. 
On the other hand he is assured that Malvaceae will yield him 
only harmless, soothing mucilages and the Labiatae, perfumes 
essential oils, balms and stimulants. He can thus, in a strange 
countr}^, apart from societies, libraries and collections, build up a 
