VI 
PREFACE 
plants, and was helped in this portion of his task by an able 
member of the Indian Civil Service, who to bis other accom- 
plishments adds a great taste for Botany. His notes have been 
incorporated by Colonel Kirtikar in the botanical descriptions. 
Before his lamented death, which took place on the 9th May, 
1917, Colonel Kirtikar had left in manuscript the botanical de- 
scriptions of almost all the plants mentioned in this work. It is 
to be greatly regretted that he did not live to give a finishing 
touch to his writings. He was, however, able to revise the 
proofs of about the first 500 pages of this book. 
When we undertook the preparation of this work, it was 
decided that it would not be a treatise on Materia Medica. A 
work of that nature should include — 
“ (1) Characters and means of recognition of the crude drug 
including — 
(а) External appearance, feel, [taste], smell, weight, &c. 
(б) Microscopical characters and tests. 
(c) General adulterants and mode of detection. 
(2) To know whence and how the drug is obtained. 
(3) The general properties of the crude drug, and the source 
of its special properties, i.e., its active principle, treated 
generally. 
(4) To know the method of development of the drug itself, 
so far as practicable ; and the nature, anatomical and develop- 
mental, of the structures whence it is obtained. 
(5) The preparations in which the drug forms a part, the 
processes of preparation and their rationale ; methods of mani- 
pulation, etc. 
(6) The doses of the drug and of its preparations. 
(7) The physiological action of the drug and its preparations.” 
Pharmacographia Indica by Messrs. Dymock, Warden and 
Hooper still remains an authoritative work on Indian Materia 
Medica. The present work is a Botany of Indian Medicinal 
Plants and so no account of drugs procurable in Indian bazars 
is given in it. 
It is true that most of the illustrations in this publication are 
reproductions from those in various works on Indian Botany and 
