THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
DECEMBER,  igoj.  ■ 
THE  CONSERVATION  AND  CULTIVATION  OF 
MEDICINAL  PLANTS. 
By  Henry  Kraemer. 
It  has  been  estimated  that  if  the  destruction  of  forests,  by  cutting 
and  fires,  continues  in  the  Southern  Appalachian  fegion,  in  ten  years 
they  will  be  beyond  reclamation.  It  seems  not  improbable  also  that 
if  the  gathering  of  native  herbs  and  drugs  continues,  as  in  the  Blue 
Ridge  districts  of  North  and  South  Carolina  and  Tennessee  and  in 
other  parts  of  this  country,  that  our  principal  medicinal  plants  will 
in  a  corresponding  number  of  years  be  well  nigh  exterminated, 
unless  some  measures  are  taken  either  to  conserve  them,  or  cultivate 
them  in  this  and  other  localities. 
Some  ten  years  ago  the  statement  was  made  that  one  firm  alone 
employed  30,000  collectors  who  scoured  the  fields  and  mountains 
for  crude  drugs  and  herbs.  My  own  inquiries  regarding  certain 
plants  seem  to  indicate  that  some  of  our  well-known  plants  are 
already  nearly  exterminated,  as,  for  example,  spigelia.  In  1897, 
while  at  Northwestern  University,  I  was  furnished  with  a  spurious 
spigelia  which,  however,  proved  to  be  of  special  interest  to  me  on 
account  of  the  presence  of  internal  cells  containing  calcium  carbo- 
nate. I  endeavored  for  several  years  to  procure  specimens  of  the 
living  plant,  Spigelia  Marylandica,  but  was  neither  able  to  find  it 
myself  nor  to  procure  specimens  through  correspondence  in  locali- 
ties where  I  supposed  it  to  be  abundant.  In  Linne's  time  the  plant 
was  apparently  abundant  in  Maryland,  and,  according  to  Gray,  it 
was  found  as  far  north  as  New  Jersey,  yet  Dr.  David  M.  R.  Culbreth 
(553) 
