INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
301 
established commercial routes, and long settled modes of phar- 
maceutical management, supplied them. Labor, moreover, is 
in this country too costly to compete with that which fur- 
nishes most of the foreign drugs. We wield the various 
means of profit on too large a scale, and are too much accus- 
tomed to the floods of grain which pour in from vast fields of 
labor and enterprise, to pay any regard to those dribblets that 
accrue from the collection of barks and roots. Hence the sup- 
ply of our indigenous medicines is not such as to enable them 
upon considerations of economy, to displace those already in 
use of equal or better understood virtues ; and the consequence 
is that the general demand for them is confined to substances 
of peculiar properties, such as could not be elsewhere procured. 
The influence of our national habits of labor upon the commer- 
cial value of drugs, is strikingly illustrated in the very great 
increase in price of Spigelia or Pink-root, since the emigra- 
tion of the Cherokee Indians, by whom chiefly it was in for- 
mer times collected and sent to market. 
I have said that the United States are rich in medicinal pro- 
ducts. This will be rendered obvious by running the eye 
over a list of the more important indigenous medicines, clas- 
sified according to their effects upon the system. Under the 
head of astringents, we shall find the bark of different species 
of Oak ; the roots of the Blackberry, Dewberry, Geranium 
maculatum, and Heuchera Americana, or alum-root ; and the 
leaves of the Pipsissewa and Uva Ursi. Among these are me- 
dicines capable of being employed for any object attainable by 
means of the class to which they belong, at least of the por- 
tion of it derived from the vegetable kingdom. In tonics our 
country is very rich. It is true that we have no Cinchona; 
but in the barks of the different species of Cornus or dogwood 
we have remedies closely analogous, though inferior to it in 
virtues. Of the simple bitters, the Sabbatia, Coptis, and Xan- 
thorrizamightbesubstituted forGentian,Quassia,and Columbo. 
The union of various important properties with the purely 
tonic, as those of a stimulant in Serpentaria, of a narcotic in 
Hops, of a sedative in Wild-cherry bark, of a diaphoretic and 
