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INTRODUCTION- 
tested all the organs of the animal body, will return to the 
most ancient remedies of mankind, to the medicinal plants and 
drugs, for the utility of which the experience of the thousands 
of years vouches.” 
There were other medical men also who were coming 
to look upon drugs of synthetical origin acting upon the 
system as foreign bodies, depressing and paralysing its func- 
tions. But according to them such was not the case with 
the drugs of vegetable origin which in their natural combina- 
tion meet nutritional conditions of the system. The possibilities 
and potentialities of medicinal plants and vegetable drugs have 
not been as yet properly and fully studied. In an article on 
“ the teaching of chemical medicine,” in the British Medical 
Jurnal of 3rd January, 1914, Dr. Mackenzie wrote that : — 
“ Not one single drug has been carefully studied so as to 
understand its full effects on the human system, effects that 
could be easily recognised had a systematic examination been 
carried out when it was administered in the hospital wards. ” 
The above observation of Dr. Mackenzie is fully borne out by 
what Dr. Charles J. Macalister, M.D., F.R.C.P. has discovered, 
as reported in the British Medical Journal of January 6, 1912, in 
Symphytum officinale, a plant known as comfrey ” in England. 
He considers it as a “ potent cell proliferant.” It was a long 
forgotten remedy which was used in olden times to heal ulcers. 
On analysis, the root of the plant was found to contain allantione 
to which Dr. Macalister ‘attributed its action as a potent cell 
proliferant. 
Dr. William Bramwell, M.A., M.D., B. Ch., of Liverpool, 
concluded a note on the above-named plant published in the same 
issue of the British Medical Jurnal in the following significant 
words. 
“ It is indeed refreshing and gratifying, in these days of 
serums and vaccines and highly complicated preparations, the 
administration of which, in some cases, is fraught with the 
gravest possible danger and soul-harrowing anxiety on the part 
of the administrator, to find a physician of Dr. Macalister’s stan- 
ding setting on foot the investigation of so simple and natural 
a remedy as common comfrey.” 
