1837.] 



Dr. Wight on the Materia Medica. 



73 



if he knew the plant — " yes, plenty grow here," was the reply, and 

 the one brought was, as in the above instance, the Jatropha. I for- 

 tunately knew the difference, and was saved the trouble and disap- 

 pointment of prescribing grain doses of a medicine that may be taken 

 in half drachm ones, or many seeds, even, be eaten with impunity, 

 provided the embryo, in which their activity is concentrated, be care- 

 fully removed. The fact here stated, will no doubt account for some 

 of the very contradictory statements we occasionally hear from 

 practitioners, who have been separately using, as they supposed, the 

 same medicine, one declaring it of great activity, while the other 

 maintains that it is perfectly inert, or at least that its activity is far 

 below what other accounts gave him reason to expect. Such then is 

 the present state of Indian Medical botany, and so long as this kind 

 of uncertainty attaches to the investigations of those who endeavour to 

 raise it to a higher rank in science, by carefully conducted experiment 

 and observation, it is next to impossible that they can succeed, or that 

 it can ever advance to that degree of perfection which it is now the 

 anxious wish of the supreme government it should attain, and might 

 under proper management be made to attain. 



Our present knowledge of Indian medical plants is principally de- 

 rived from the works of Drs. Fleming and Ainslie. These, for the 

 most part, are little more than mere catalogues of native names of 

 plants, with the botanical ones, so far as the authors had the means of 

 ascertaining them, attached, but generally without descriptions, and 

 in no instance with figures of the plants referred to, by which a person 

 unacquainted with botany could ascertain the identity of specimens 

 supplied by a native druggist, with the plant named in the catalogue ; 

 and, for want of plates, these, in all other respects valuable, works, to 

 this day remain almost a dead letter. They, it is true, refer to works 

 where botanical characters, and sometimes plates, are to be found, but 

 the books so quoted are in few hands, some of them of great rarity, or 

 so costly and bulky that few can afford to purchase them, or if they did, 

 could conveniently carry them on a march : while Willdenow's Species 

 Plantarum, in nearly all cases the leading authority, requires, on the 

 part of the person consulting it, a proficiency in botany, to make out 

 a plant from his brief characters, not easily acquired, and which few 

 obtain. 



"When these authors published, such was the backward state of the 

 arts in India, that, had they wished it, they could scarcely at any 

 cost, short of sending their drawing to England to be engraved, have 

 illustrated their works with figures of the plants named. Times are 

 now greatly altered : the discovery of lithography, and its application 

 to the representation of objects of natural history, has effected this 



