Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  19 18. 
Medicinal  Plant  Supplies. 
409 
not  because  it  was  not  produced  in  the  United  States  in  great  quan- 
tities, but  was  imported  more  cheaply.  To-day  we  are  practically 
independent  of  foreign  sources  and  are  using  especially  the  heavy 
California  liquid  petrolatum. 
In  addition  to  making  the  most  of  our  natural  resources,  a  new 
industry  has  been  developed  in  that  we  are  beginning  to  cultivate 
certain  medicinal  plants  on  a  rather  large  scale.  The  most  inter- 
esting part  of  this  work  is  that  it  is  calculated  to  revolutionize  our 
knowledge  of  medicines.  It  has  brought  us  to  a  realization  that  we 
have  not  been  independent  in  thought  and  manufacture,  but  have 
been  influenced  to  a  very  great  extent  upon  European  traditions  and 
prejudices.  Up  until  six  or  seven  years  ago  no  one  in  this  country 
cultivated  digitalis,  and  our  pharmacopceial  standards  were  based 
largely  upon  foreign  pharmacopoeias  which  required  that  leaves 
should  be  of  wild  plants  and  of  second  year's  growth,  and  that  they 
should  be  most  carefully  preserved  in  an  atmosphere  over  burnt 
lime.  American  investigators  showed  first  that  cultivated  plants 
were  equally  as  valuable  as  wild  plants,  furthermore  that  the  con- 
stituents of  first-year  leaves  were  the  same  as  second-year  leaves, 
and  finally  that  all  that  was  necessary  was  for  them  to  be  dried  in 
the  ordinary  manner  and  kept  dry. 
To-day  we  are  growing  in  various  parts  of  the  country  a  great 
variety  of  medicinal  plants.  Several  of  our  large  manufacturers 
have  farms  for  their  own  use.  There  are  a  few  rather  large  inde- 
pendent growers  of  medicinal  plants  and  finally  quite  a  number  of 
our  large  universities  in  the  West  have  experimental  farms  for  the 
scientific  study  of  medicinal  plants.  It  is  quite  within  the  proba- 
bility that  within  the  next  ten  years  at  least  50  per  cent,  and  it  may 
be  more,  nearly  90  per  cent.,  of  all  the  medicinal  plants  which  are 
useful  will  either  be  grown  in  the  United  States  or  collected  from 
indigenous  plants.  This  new  industry  could  hardly  have  received 
greater  stimulus  than  by  a  war  cataclysm  such  as  we  are  now  upon. 
Crude  drug  dealers  and  manufacturers  are  alert  to  this  situation 
and  there  are  quite  a  number  of  new  drug  companies  which  are  now 
extensively  advertising  "American  Botanical  Drugs,"  "Wild  and 
Cultivated,"  "  Collected,  Cultivated,  Cured,  etc.,  under  our  own 
management."  One  can  hardly  realize  the  importance  of  this  trend 
of  events  unless  he  was  conversant  with  the  actual  conditions  upon 
the  market  a  few  years  ago.  At  the  present  time  there  is  inspection 
and  oversight  of  drugs  at  the  point  of  collecting. 
