10 
PH ARM AC AL PLANTS AND THEIR CULTURE. 
tionecl therapeutic value, or that they may be grown profitably. Some 
of the difficulties in the way of profitable culture have already been 
referred to, the chief one being high-priced American labor versus the 
cheaper foreign labor. We can no doubt put into operation ways and 
means which will in a measure overcome this difference in the cost of 
labor, as the use of time- and labor-saving machinery, improvement in 
cultural operations, etc. First of all it will be necessary to create an 
interest in that kind of plant-culture. Such an interest has been created 
in other countries, notably in England and Germany, where certain 
medicinal plants are grown on an enormous scale, sufficient to supply 
the home market at least. Just as we compete successfully or excel in 
certain branches of horticulture, agriculture, arboriculture, etc., just so 
may we compete successfully or excel in the growing of medicinal 
plants. All that is necessary is for enterprising and intelligent indi- 
viduals to establish plantations of desirable medicinal plants, in suitable 
localities, growing them on a sufficiently large scale, and putting into 
operation the appropriate methods of cultivating, collecting, drying, 
marketing, etc. Beginnings should be made with those drugs which will 
find a ready market. It must be borne in mind that it is necessary to 
compete with the foreign market, and that the enterprise should yield a 
profit equal to that from other soil-cultural pursuits. There is no 
plausibly apparent reason why this should not be done. If, as the 
Department of Agriculture suggests, the farmer of the United States 
may hope to collect medicinal weeds profitably, he will find it certainly 
even more profitable to devote his entire time and energy to the intel- 
ligent culture of medicinal plants, whether weeds or not. A few 
medicinal plants are being cultivated on a large scale in the United 
States, as the mints in Michigan and Wisconsin, and crocus in Pennsyl- 
vania. It is affirmed that African senna ( Cassia acutifolia ) has been 
successfully grown at Corpus Christi, Texas, and at AVashington, D. C. 
As has been indicated elsewhere, most medicinal plants may be grown 
in the State. The familiar garden herbs and pot herbs used medicinally 
and for culinary purposes can certainly be grown successfully, if not 
profitably. We may also include the mints, pennyroyal, sage, lettuce, 
yerba santa, thyme, caraway, fennel, coriander, camomile, and many 
others. There are numerous introduced trees, shrubs, and herbs, in 
cultivation and escaped from cultivation, which might, no doubt, be 
grown profitably for medicinal purposes, as the camphor tree, broom, 
blue gum, and carob. It would, however, seem desirable to begin with 
a few of the more important, less common, herbaceous drug plants, as 
aconite, digitalis, rhubarb, belladonna, scopola, hyoscyamus, valerian, 
veratrum, and others, although there is no plausible reason why such 
common but nevertheless very desirable drugs, as taraxacum, chicory, 
mallow, burdock, horehound, milk weed, sambucus, stramonium, absin- 
