Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1900. 
Editorial. 
185 
Many  others  that  were  formerly  abundant  in  Ohio,  Indiana  and 
Illinois  are  now  very  scarce  there  and  are  largely  supplied  from  the 
States  west  of  the  Mississippi."  It  may  be  added  that  the  great 
herb-gathering  district  in  the  United  States  at  the  present  time  is 
in  the  Blue  Ridge  districts  of  North  and  South  Carolina  and  Ten- 
nessee. Judging  from  the  destruction  of  wooded  land  and  taking 
into  consideration  the  fact  that  this  region  has  offered  unusual 
opportunities  to  the  capitalist  and  others,  we  may  expect,  in  the 
course  of  not  many  years,  a  repetition  of  the  history  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  drug-yielding  plants  in  the  Northern  States. 
If  this  should  be  the  case,  then  it  is  apparent  that  drug  farms 
will  be  a  necessity  and  would  offer  peculiar  inducements  to  those 
prepared  to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunity  offered. 
Many  experiments  have  been  made  in  the  cultivation  of  plants 
and  the  results  have  been  uniformly  successful  so  far  as  the  pro- 
ducts produced  are  concerned.  In  the  address  1  referred  to  is  given 
the  substance  of  replies  from  a  large  number  of  experimenters  on 
this  subject.  The  following  are  the  names  of  some  of  the  plants 
the  cultivation  of  which  has  been  successful  in  the  United  States, 
and  the  products  have  been  at  least  equal  to,  and  in  some  cases 
superior  to,  either  the  imported  drugs  or  those  from  wild  plants: 
Althaea,  taraxacum,  calamus,  catnip,  motherwort,  pennyroyal, 
peppermint,  scullcap,'the  docks,  etc. 
In  a  recent  letter  from  Messrs.  Allaire,  Woodward  &  Co.,  of 
Peoria,  111.,  on  this  subject,  they  state  that  many  medicinal 
plants  are  now  being  successfully  cultivated  in  Michigan,  such  as 
peppermint,  motherwort,  boneset,  tansy,  sage  and  horehound. 
Many  important  articles  bearing  on  the  subject  of  the  cultivation 
of  medicinal  plants  have  appeared  in  the  past  ten  years,  and  we 
append  the  following  :  (1)  On  the  general  subject  of  the  cultivation  of 
drug-yielding  plants  ;2  (2)  the  influence  of  cultivation  upon  medicinal 
plants;3  the  effects  of  soil  and  cultivation  on  the  development  of 
the  active  principles  of  plants  ;4  the  cultivation  of  medicinal  herbs 
in  Germany,  with  an  enumeration  of  the  plants  successfully  grown;5 
1  Loc.  cit. 
2  Zeitschr.  Oest.  Apoth.  Ver.,  1893,  p.  157,  p.  303  ;  Pharm.  Post,  1892,  p.  675, 
p.  1021  ;  1893,  p.  93,  p.  497  ;  Deutsch.-Amer.  Apoth.  Zeit.,  1894,  p.  164. 
3  Amer.  Jour.  Pharm.,  1862,  p.  268. 
4Amer.  Jour.  Pharm.,  1866,  p.  45. 
5  Chem.  and  Drug.,  1893,  p.  912  ;  abstract  in  Proc.  A.  Ph.  A.,  1894,  p.  863. 
