MEDICINAL HERBS : CULTIVATION AND PREPARATION. 135 
powerful and most valuable medicine, to its cultivation in this country 
having practically ceased, and to the medicinal preparations of the 
plant falling almost into disuse, through unreliability of therapeutical 
action, due to their variation in strength, from being derived from 
different species of Aconite in Germany. As the genuine Aconite 
root no longer pays to cultivate in this country, being undersold by 
German and Japanese roots, it has become unobtainable, and the 
Pharmacopoeia has consequently been compelled not to restrict, in the 
present edition, the medicinal root to plants cultivated in Britain, 
as it did in the previous edition of 1898. A protective tariff would 
have prevented this undignified and undesirable position. 
I am informed that a good many owners of large country houses, 
who have large gardens and skilled gardeners, are anxious to take 
up medicinal plant cultivation from a patriotic point of view, but in 
most cases have no particular knowledge of herb-growing except 
for the herb-gardens which are grown for amusement in so many 
large establishments, and are desirous to learn something about the 
industry, and by what means Great Britain can be made independent 
of the importation of medicinal plants and herbs from Germany 
and Austria. And as it is quite possible for owners of country houses 
and large landowners to help in this matter, I will first indicate how 
this might be done, using two important medicinal plants for the 
purpose of illustration, viz. Belladonna and Foxglove. 
Belladonna is a most valuable plant in the treatment of eye diseases, 
and also taken internally for some forms of pulmonary disease, and 
as a local application to ease pain ; it is also used as a source of the 
alkaloid Atropine. It is one of the medicinal plants of which the 
exportation is forbidden. It is a somewhat local plant, being almost 
confined to calcareous soils, but nevertheless occurs in twenty-eight 
British counties, finding its southern limit from Dorset to Kent, and 
its northern one in the counties of Fife and Argyll, although compara- 
tively rare north of Yorkshire and Westmorland. It is a perennial 
plant, growing most luxuriantly under the shade of trees on wooded 
hills, on chalk, limestone, and oolite, but becoming dwarfed when 
growing in old quarries, or spots exposed to the sun, and consequently, 
although cultivated in the open, it there rarely attains a large size, and 
is more subject to insect attacks under cultivation than when grown 
under natural conditions. An enormous increase in the yield could 
be obtained if the head gardeners on estates where it grows wild were 
instructed to distribute, in April, all seedling plants to other positions 
in the same woods, since the seedlings are often too crowded where 
they do occur. If the gamekeepers were instructed to see that the 
plants were not stolen, and the plants were cut at the proper time, 
and sold to the agents of the wholesale drug trade, there would, in 
my opinion, be no need to import Belladonna at all, whether herb or 
root, and it is quite possible that there would be a sufficient supply 
even for export to those of our Colonies where the climate and local 
conditions prevent its successful cultivation. Its limits are latitude 
