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INTRODUCTION. 
Mr. T. N. Mukerjee and Sir George Watt, who spared no pains 
to make the Exhibition of indigenous drugs as complete as 
possible. The Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, 
originally projected by Mr. Mukherji, but subsequently complet- 
ed by Dr. G. Watt, contains informations from all possible sour- 
ces, as to the uses and properties of indigenous drugs. 
IV. 
“ The only way to illumine the whole field of native thera- 
peutics,” wrote an intelligent foreigner, “ is to survey it in 
small tracts and sift the value of those drugs peculiar to each 
province There is a wide feeling that there is a bene- 
ficence in the scheme of nature which provides in every country 
suitable remedies on the spot for the ill to which humanity is 
locally most prone. Very little has been done so far to in- 
corporate in the practice of physicians in the country the 
medicines which in India nature scatters broadcast from her 
lap.” 
It is necessary to pass in review the principal wdrks which 
have advanced our knowledge of the subject. In order to do 
this, we should take into consideration those works which treat 
of the drugs of the different provinces of this country. In fact, 
excluding the “ Pharmacopoeia of India,” the “ Pbarmacogra- 
phica Indica” and Watt’s “ Dictionary of the Economic Products 
of India,” all the works which have made their appearance deal 
with drugs and medicinal plants of certain provinces only. For 
obvious reasons this arrangement is a good one.* 
I have already stated the great stimulus that was given to 
the study of the subject ‘by the establishment of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal! Calcutta as till recently the Capital of India 
possessing one of the finest Botanical gardens in the world afforded 
great facilities for the study of the subject. Roxburgh, Fleming 
and Royle were the first to write about the medicinal plants and 
their uses in the Asiatic Researches and the Journal of the Bengal 
Asiatic Society. But there was no systematic treatise on the 
* Of the drugs used by the ancient Hindus, the best account in English 
is the work on Hindu Materia Medica by the late Dr. Udoy Chand Dutt. This 
work requires re-editing. 
