MEDICINAL HERBS : CULTIVATION AND PREPARATION. 133 
MEDICINAL HERBS: THEIR CULTIVATION AND 
PREPARATION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
By E. M. Holmes, F.L.S., F.R.H.S., 
Curator of the Pharmaceutical Society's Museum. 
[Read April n, 1916; Henry Cust, Esq., in the Chair.] 
Since the commencement of the war, considerable interest has been 
aroused concerning the necessity for cultivating some of the more 
important medicinal plants on a larger scale than heretofore, for 
two of the facts that stand out clearly as a result of the war are that 
there is a shortage of supply, and that we have been hitherto largely 
dependent on Austria and Germany for medicinal plants and herbs, 
many of which have been imported at a lower price than they can be 
grown or collected in Great Britain — so much so, indeed, as to have 
seriously affected the home industry. 
It will perhaps be useful to direct attention to some facts concern- 
ing the present position of the cultivation of medicinal plants in this 
country. It must be distinctly understood that it is only a minor in- 
dustry, as compared with that of food products, but it is, nevertheless, 
one of national importance, seeing that it concerns the health of the 
nation, and the enormous requirements of our sick and wounded sailors 
and soldiers, as well as of our ordinary hospitals and dispensaries. 
Why there should be any necessity to import from Austria and 
Germany plants that grow well in this country is not at first sight 
obvious. The real reason for their importation is clearly a financial 
one, viz. the well-known law of commerce to buy in the cheapest 
market and sell in the dearest. This tendency, together with the 
neglect of scientific organization and the absence of a protective tariff, 
has led to the purchase by this country of cheaper material from 
abroad. As in many other cases, the public has remained in igno- 
rance of the way in which free trade has injured the home industry. 
The demand for cheap physic, fostered by the co-operative stores, 
has reduced the price of drugs to a point at which no pharmacist can 
make a living unless he sells other articles, properly belonging to 
other trades ; and this unfair competition has naturally led to the 
importation of cheap medicinal plants and herbs to meet the demand. 
These imported medicinal plants are naturally, in nine cases out of 
ten, of inferior quality, and sometimes mixed with dangerous herbs. 
I may mention a case in point. Some years ago I was asked to 
examine and report upon a sample of Belladonna root which had 
been supplied under contract to one of the large London hospitals, 
