544  Pre-historic  Pharmacy  in  America.  {ANove0mber,hS* 
backward  touches,  I  cannot  but  resent  such  groundless  words. 
As  one  whose  after-life  was  passed  in  connection  with  explorations 
and  excavations  among  these  mounds  and  relics  of  primitive  man 
from  which  come  no  record  concerning  their  creators,  I  cannot  but 
offer  a  feeble  protest.  In  boyhood  days  I  wandered  amid  the  burial 
places  .ot  a  long-lost  people.  From  the  freshly  washed  gravel  banks, 
deep  in  Kentucky  soil,  I  collected  shell-made  pottery  and  utensils 
such  as  Indian  tradition  knew  nothing  about.  And  as  I  look  back 
and  ponder  over  such  unappreciated  antiquarian  riches  once  at  my 
command  but  now  lost  forever,  I  wonder  how  any  thoughtful  man 
can  consider  America  as  a  country  just  opened  up  to  them. 
Grant  to  the  so-called  "  Old  World  "  all  its  marvelous  antiquarian 
riches  in  stone  and  bronze,  gold  and  precious  gems,  and  yet  we  have 
American  monuments  as  a  heritage  of  the  past  that  possess  a 
charm  as  touchingly  pathetic  as  are  the  tracings  of  dead  civilizations 
in  other  lands. 
To  pharmacists  in  particular  is  this  study  of  these  ancient  remains 
significant,  for  we  find  typified  therein  the  fact  that  nations  who 
lived  and  died  and  left  no  cry,  word  or  page  of  print  to  tell  their 
story,  were  master  workmen  with  the  mortar  and  pestle. 
But  to  study  these  relics  we  must  pass  from  well-known  Eastern 
American  antiquities,  such  as  the  Mound  Builders  left  in  profusion 
in  all  this  great  Central  West.  We  must  pass  the  shell  monuments 
of  Florida  and  the  connected  chains  of  mounds  that  stretch  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  to  near  the  Dominion  of  Canada. 
This  great  region,  even  as  far  eastward  as  the  Atlantic  shore,  is 
thickly  dotted  with  the  remains  of  a  form  of  civilization  that  gives 
no  other  record  of  itself  than  upbuilded  mounds  of  mud  and  heaps 
of  shell,  and  utensils  such  as  very  primitive  people  use  for  self- 
existence. 
Turn  from  this  forgotten  people  to  the  great  Southwest,  that 
land  so  recently  carved  out  of  the  so-called  wilderness  which  in  our 
boyhood  was  defined  as  a  part  of  the  Great  American  Desert.  A 
marvelous  scene  presents  itself.  Behold  !  this  is  not  a  new  land. 
New  to  modern  man  it  may  be,  but  nevertheless  a  country  literally 
dotted  with  villages  and  houses,  a  land  rich  in  habitations  of  for- 
gotten races.  "  Unexplored  territory "  has  this  been  called  but 
recently,  this  country  that  carries  in  itself  lingering  evidences  of 
man's  antiquated  handiwork  sufficient  in  themselves  to  astound  one 
