Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  19 18. 
Medicinal  Plant  Supplies. 
413 
only  will  many  of  the  important  foreign  medicinal  plants  be  culti- 
vated in  the  United  States,  but  many  of  our  wild  indigenous  drug- 
yielding  plants  will  be  studied  and  their  production  brought  under 
definite  control.  When  this  time  comes,  it  is  quite  likely  that  the 
price  of  medicines  made  from  crude  drugs  will  be  considerably  re- 
duced and  at  the  same  time  a  higher  and  more  uniform  quality  be 
secured.  Adulteration  and  substitution  will  be  entirely  eliminated, 
as  nearly  all  of  the  instances  of  sophistication  in  drugs  is  due  to 
either  carelessness  or  ignorance  in  collecting  them. 
Probably  I  should  call  attention  to  the  castor-oil  industry,  which 
is  being  developed  on  a  very  extensive  scale  in  Florida  and  Texas. 
The  amount  of  castor  oil  consumed  during  normal  times  in  this 
country  is  enormous,  averaging  the  product  expressed  from  over 
one  million  bushels  of  castor  beans  per  year.  Most  of  our  commer- 
cial supplies  have  come  from  India,  Manchuria  and  South  America. 
The  chief  interest  of  the  government  to-day  in  castor  oil  is  not  its 
medicinal  use,  but  its  value  as  a  lubricant  for  aeroplanes  using  a 
rotary  motor.  The  demand  for  lubricants  of  this  class  is  very  great, 
and  apparently  there  is  no  oil  which  is  as  valuable  as  a  lubricant 
for  fine  machinery.  The  farmers  of  the  Southern  states  are  being 
interested  and  it  is  likely  that  a  hundred  thousand  acres  will  be 
planted  in  castor  beans.  The  Signal  Corps  of  the  United  States 
government  are  arranging  contracts  with  the  farmers,  and  Dr.  W. 
W.  Stockberger,  of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  is  advising 
the  farmers  on  such  questions  as  the  planting,  growing,  care  and 
harvesting  of  the  crop  as  seems  best  to  fit  each  individual  case.  The 
experiments  thus  far  conducted  in  the  United  States  show  that  the 
yield  per  acre  of  castor  oil  seeds  is  between  900  and  1,350  pounds. 
Individuals  plants  alone  will  yield  something  like  twenty  pounds  of 
seeds.  The  seeds  will  yield  from  50  to  70  per  cent,  of  fixed  oil. 
This  means  that  the  yield  per  acre  would  be  between  500  and  900 
pounds  of  castor  oil,  or  a  return  of  nearly  $300  per  acre.  When 
one  considers  that  the  care  of  cultivation  is  not  more  than  with  corn 
and  that  the  plants  are  unusually  free  from  fungus  diseases,  the 
success  of  the  government  crop  is  practically  assured. 
The  situation  then  in  a  nutshell  regarding  the  present  and  future 
supplies  of  medicinal  plants  in  the  United  States  is  very  encourag- 
ing. It  has  been  universally  acceded  that  in  point  of  elegance  the 
medicinal  preparations  made  by  American  manufacturers  are  unex- 
celled.    Indeed,  there  are  quite  a  few  American  houses  with 
