INTRODUCTION 
TO 
BOTANY. 
1. On the Use of Botany. 
The use and pleasure of studying botany have been so 
long acknowledged, that it may seem perfectly superfluous 
to discourse upon that subject ; but a slight sketch of the 
use and pleasure accruing by this study is here given, in 
order to convince those students, who have not yet reflected 
upon the subject, that in bestowing their time, their labour, 
or their money, upon the acquirement of this science, they 
will not court an ungrateful mistress, but one who will 
amply reward them for the pains they take in acquiring 
her. 
The greater part of those who study botany, are persons 
of the medical profession, and of course the use of botany 
in medicine is the first to be considered. It will therefore 
be necessary, before any further progress is made, to advert 
to the great difference between practising in large cities 
and sea-port towns on the one hand, and in country vil- 
lages on the other. To the former merchants resort, and 
the warehouses are filled with the choicest drugs of foreign 
regions; the poverty induced by the vicissitudes of com- 
merce requires alleviation from the charity of the rich, hos- 
pitals and dispensaries arise, and become medical schools. 
The time of the practitioners being fully occupied by the 
denseness of the population, they find it more convenient 
to use the drugs in the warehouses, than to collect them- 
selves the indigenous productions of the surrounding coun- 
try; hence they regard with indifference whether the drug 
be native or foreign, and this indifference, or rather pre- 
ference for foreign drugs, passes of course into the phar- 
macopoeias published in those cities. 
VOL. I. B 
