575 
EEMARKS ON THE NECESSITY EOE A EURTHEE CULTI¬ 
VATION OE MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
BY DANIEL HANBURY. 
All who are engaged in the buying and selling of drugs are well aware of 
the remarkable fluctuations to which such commodities are liable ; all know 
that a drug which at one time is scarce and high-priced may suddenly become 
so plentiful as to be nearly unsaleable. This is especially the case with drugs 
recently introduced and for reasons which it is not difficult to explain. A drug, 
the production of a foreign country, introduced as a novelty, is at the com¬ 
mencement commonly in few hands, and hence a monopoly existing, a high 
price is obtained. If the sale prove considerable and the drug bid fair to have 
important uses, this high price leads to enquiry abroad and usually to the ship¬ 
ment of large supplies,— often so much too large as to involve the holders of 
the commodity in great loss. A reaction ensues : no one will import what has 
been unremunerative, and consequently after the lapse of time the drug grows 
scarce, until the price mounts to a figure high enough to tempt a fresh importa¬ 
tion. The scarcity of old established drugs is dependent on a variety of cir¬ 
cumstances some of which are curious from the remoteness of their effects. 
Thus the demand for cotton consequent on the war in the United States, sti¬ 
mulated the culture of that crop in Asia Minor; and as the growing and 
picking of cotton required many hands, the wages of the peasantry so greatly 
advanced that it was less profitable than usual to collect Scammony, and hence 
a reduced supply and enhanced price of that drug. 
Political convulsions impeding the freedom of commerce, also operate exten¬ 
sively in diminishing the exports of a country,—and to such cause may be 
attributed the late high price of Snake-root, Senega and other drugs of the 
United States. The increased value of Jalap is probably due to the unsettled 
state of Mexico. 
, East Indian Kino of the best kind is a drug which during the past few years 
has become exceedingly scarce or I might say has ceased to be imported. Now 
this sort of Kino which was produced near Tellicherry, was a few years ago 
brought into competition with Kino from another district of India, which 
though considered inferior in quality, was freely sold and at a much lower rate 
than the old drug. The price of Tellicherry Kino consequently tell enor¬ 
mously, and it would seem that the drug has ceased to be brought into the 
market. 
Ipecacuanha again has doubled in value since 1850 owing partly, it is said, 
to the extirpation of the plant from old habitats and the consequent necessity 
of collecting it from new and more distant localities ; and partly to the circum¬ 
stance that the stock of the drug is in the hands of but few persons, who are 
thus able to restrict the export and in consequence to raise the price. 
The rarity of a drug or its total disappearance is due in some cases to an 
improvident and ruinous method of collection. Thus, a century ago there was 
still found in commerce Loxa Bark that had been stripped from tree-trunks of 
no me^in dimensions, and some such bark which I have seen has a thickness of a 
quarter of an inch and is rich in alkaloids. At the present day, old trees yield¬ 
ing this species of bark are unknown, all the Loxa Bark of modern commerce 
being derived from shrubs, which are stripped even to their smallest twigs.* 
The same fate seems likely to fall (if it has not already done so) on the Red 
* Cross, Report on Exp)edition to procure seeds (^Cinchona condaininea in the forests of 
Loxa, Nov. 1861. 
