THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
NOVEMBER,  1890. 
.    PLANT-GROUPS  AND  THEIR  CONSTITUENTS  AND 
PROPERTIES.1 
By  John  M.  Maisch. 
On  several  occasions,  when  fulfilling  the  assigned  duty,  of  address- 
ing the  students  of  this  College,  introductory  to  the  annual  courses 
of  lectures,  I  have  discussed  questions  relating  to  the  origin  and  the 
supply  of  drugs,  or  referring  to  physiological  processes  of  plant-life. 
The  study  of  Materia  Medica  affords  a  never-failing  source  of 
inquiries  into  matters  of  the  utmost  interest  to  mankind,  which  are 
not  confined  merely  to  the  identity  and  quality  of  a  drug,  but  which 
involve  also  commercial  and  economical  questions,  and  frequently 
are  influenced  by,  and  more  or  less  closely  related  to,  historical 
events.  We  are  thus  led  upon  a  field  which  is  entirely  distinct 
from  the  pharmaceutical  uses  and  medical  application  of  drugs, 
and  which  enlists  the  interest  of  the  student  of  general  and  special 
history  equally  well,  and  sometimes  even  to  a  much  greater  degree, 
than  it  does  the  student  of  medicine  and  pharmacy.  I  need  but 
refer  to  the  discoveries  that  have  resulted  from  the  efforts  to  find 
direct  communication  by  sea  with  the  countries  where  the  most 
valued  spices  are  indigenous ;  to  the  changes  in  the  habits  of  civil- 
ized nations  occasioned  by  the  introduction  and  extension  of  the  use 
of  the  potato  and  of  coffee  and  tea  ;  to  the  influence  exerted  by 
Arabian  physicians  upon  the  medical  armamentarium  of  Europe;  to 
the  events  which  favored  the  general  use  of  tobacco  in  Europe  ;  to 
1  Introductory  Lecture  to  the  seventieth  course  of  instruction  in  the  Phila- 
delphia College  of  Pharmacy,  October  I,  1890  ;  published  at  the  request  of  the 
Publication  Committee. 
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