THE  AMEKIOA]Sr 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
FEBRUARY,  ipio 
•    Vf  ^ 
PHARMACOGNOSY  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES 
PHARMACOPOEIA.* 
By  Henry  Kraemer. 
Pharmacognosy  in  both  the  modern  acceptation  and  application 
of  the 'term  is  a  comparatively  new  department  of  science,  although 
the  history  of  the  use  of  vegetable  drugs  is  as  old  as  that  of  medi- 
cine itself.  While  we  have  been  accustomed  to  look  upon  pharma- 
cognosy as  a  division  of  botany,  it  has  so  expanded  within  the  past 
twenty-five  years  as  properly  to  be  regarded  as  a  distinct  branch  of 
science.  As  in  bacteriology  the  problems  in  the  study  of  bacteria 
are  different  from  those  of  the  botanist,  so  in  pharmacognosy  the 
problems  differ  from  those  in  pure  botany,  being  on  the  one  hand 
similar  to  those  which  are  considered  by  the  modern  agriculturist. 
In  other  words,  pharmacognosy  involves  not  only  a  study  of  botany, 
including  morphology  and  anatomy,  but  also  studies  in  chemistry, 
including  both  plant  chemistry  (phyto-chemistry)  and  drug  chemis- 
try (pharmaco-chemistry).  The  pharmacognosist  is  not  merely 
concerned  with  the  dried  drug  as  he  sees  it,  but  also  with  those 
conditions  which  influence  the  development  of  the  constituents  £ 
the  plant  or  which  modify  those  constituents  in  the  drug  on  which 
medicinal  activity  depends.  Indeed  the  subject  is  a  very  broad  one 
and  a  very  complicated  one  when  viewed  from  all  sides,  and  it  is  a 
long  way  from  the  living  plant  from  which  the  drug  is  derived  to 
the  laboratory  of  the  pharmacist  who  makes  the  preparation.  There 
*  Read  before  the  City  of  Washington  Branch  of  the  American  Pharma- 
ceutical Association,  January  5,  1910. 
(5i) 
