26 
which they belonged. This has enabled me, in observations 
on the nature and distribution of the Flora of the plains 
and mountains of Northern India,* to accompany them with 
remarks on the physical and medical properties of the 
different families of plants. 
I trust I may be excused for entering into these details, 
as they are indispensable for proving that I took some 
trouble to make myself acquainted with the actual state of 
the Materia Medica of the East, and was thence enabled to 
pursue its history, and to trace individual articles, even 
under varying names and in different languages, from the 
present to the earliest times. It is by these means that 
I have been able to pick up one or two of the lost links 
in the history of the science. 
I believe the object I have in view will be best effected 
by dividing the subject into the four heads of Persian, 
Arabian, Indian, and Greek Materia Medica. 
In the first I include not only the works composed ini 
Persia, but also those which were written in that language in 
India, as the plan and sources of information of all are the 
same. The period embraced by these authors is one of 
400 years ; the latest and most copious of them is the 
author of the Mukhzun-al-Udwieh, or Storehouse of Medi- 
cines, written as late as the year 1769, and printed at 
Hoogly in 1824, The best known of the Persian works is the 
Ulfaz-Udwieh, compiled by the Physician of the Emperor 
Shah Jehan. This is little more than a catalogue, but is 
valuable as giving the synonyms in Arabic, Persian, and 
Hindooee, in the Roman character, and from having been 
translated into English in 1793 by Mr. Gladwin. The most 
esteemed, however, of the Persian works, is that called Toohft- 
ul Moomineen, written in the year 1669, by Meer Mo- 
hummud Moomin, an inhabitant of Tinkaboon, in the 
• Illustrations of the Botany and other branches of the Natural History 
of the Himalayan Mountains, and of the Flora of Cashmere. 
