INTRODUCTION. 
xlix 
them and the uses to which they are put. * If we turn to the 
past history of our art, we find that our knowledge regarding 
the properties of some of the most useful medicines has been 
obtained in this empirical way. 
Lastly, we should not neglect to bestow our attention on those 
indigenous plants which have not been used medicinally by the 
natives of this country, but are in much use in other countries. 
After recording the medicinal uses, we have to commence 
the more important subject, viz., that of “ weeding out the 
worthless from the good ” amongst these medicinal plants. For 
this purpose, we have to seek the aid of chemistry. It is well- 
known that plants generally owe their virtues as medicinal agents 
to certain characteristic alkaloids and principles present in them. 
Because a complete and full chemical analysis of the medicinal 
plants of this country has not yet been performed, it is therefore 
that there exists so much uncertainty regarding their actions. 
This isolation of principles will constitute a great improvement 
in pharmacy. For, then, instead of using preparations made 
from plants which differ in constitution from time to time, and 
vary in the strength of their active principles and physiological 
characteristics, depending on the climate, season, and amount of 
sunshine under which, and the soil in which, they have grown, we 
should use the active principles in which the same variability is 
unlikely to occur. Moreover, they would possess the advantages 
of being always alike, easily assimilable and capable of ready 
solubility, ease in administration and rapidity as well as certainty 
of action. Then a practitioner also could carry his whole 
dispensary in a portable form.t 
This chemical analysis would also help us in determining 
the actions of medicines in health and disease. It should, 
however, be borne in mind, that chemical analysis but imperfectly 
reveals the real nature of many drugs. The presence of dissociated 
* Vanau$adi Prakai, by Mr. Vasudev Chintaman Bapat, in Mahrathi, is 
as tar as 1 know, the only work which gives the uses to which some of the 
medicinal plants are put by the natives of Concan. 
t The alkaloids have all been discovered within the last 100 years. For 
want of chemical investigation indigenous drugs are used in their crude forms, 
instead of their alkaloids or active principles. Brunton’s “ Iron Age of 
Therapeutics," is one of remote and uncertain future, but I believe a groat 
deal of iron, if not steel, can be extracted, very useful for all practical 
purposes from the stones in the shape of our indigenous drugs. 
