312 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
and condition of the science in its general relations among us. 
A few words will embrace all that need be said on this sub- 
ject; for the history of Materia Medica in the United States 
has been, till within a few years, identical with that of the 
same branch of knowledge in Europe. While we were colo- 
nies of England, we were willingly indebted to the mother 
country for intellectual supplies as well as for manufactures, 
and, considering our credit as involved in hers, did not seek 
an independent national reputation. Our medical doctrines 
and modes of practice, the choice of remedies and their modes 
of preparation, even the medicines themselves and all their 
pharmaceutical modifications, were received from Great Bri- 
tain with a filial respect which did not allow us to suspect the 
possibility of anything better or more applicable to our condi- 
tion. Her authorities were our authorities, her books were 
our books, and in great measure her physicians were our phy- 
sicians; for the great west was then the Atlantic border, and 
the young medical men from the mother country found a wel- 
come as cordial as that now extended, on the banks of the 
Mississippi, to the alumni of our own schools. Nor did our 
professional cease with our political dependence. For many 
years after we had thrown off the yoke of the mother country, 
we continued to look to her authors almost exclusively as our 
guides in medicine. So far as concerns the Materia Medica, 
the first effort to supply ourselves was in the publication, in 
1806, of the American Dispensatory by Dr. John Redman 
Coxe. This work was little more than a reprint of the Edin- 
burgh Dispensatory, with an alteration in the arrangement of 
the articles, and the introduction of some notices in relation 
to our indigenous medicines. Such as it was, however, it ac- 
quired great celebrity, passed through numerous editions, and 
for many years was the almost exclusive pharmaceutical 
guide-book of a great portion of the Union. In 1810 ap- 
peared the American New Dispensatory by Dr. Thacher of 
Massachusetts, which, with greater claims to originality, was 
scarcely less meritorious in other respects than its prede- 
cessor, and had the advantage of presenting more elaborate 
