INFLUENCE  OF  CULTIVATION  UPON  MEDICINAL  PLANTS.  271 
their  properties ;  nothing  of  all  these  matters  is  considered. 
Those  persons  who  make  such  speculations  are  most  frequently 
strangers  to  the  pharmaceutical  profession,  do  not  suspect  the 
importance  of  these  questions,  nor  the  great  injury  they  cause 
thereby  to  the  public  health ;  they  sell  their  productions  as  gar- 
deners sell  their  vegetables  ;  the  profit  they  obtain  largely  repays 
them  for  their  labors  ;  they  have  attained  their  object ;  they  care 
for  little  beyond,  they  are  not  responsible  for  the  injury  pro- 
duced. Nor  is  this  all,  for,  to  increase  the  profit  as  much  as 
possible,  they  subject  some  plants,  such  as  peppermint,  balm, 
belladonna,  stramonium,  to  the  same  periodical  cutting  as  is 
practised  in  the  cultivation  upon  a  large  scale  of  forage  plants 
in  our  fields,  without  considering  in  the  least  whether  such  a 
treatment,  which  does  not  give  the  plants  time  for  elaborating 
their  active  principles,  will  not  considerably  impair  their  medical 
properties.  We  have  known,  since  the  time  of  Daubenton,  that 
the  young  shoots  of  aconite  and  hemlock  may  be  eaten  with  im- 
punity, while  the  full-grown  and  mature  plants  of  the  same 
species  are  poisonous.  We  know  also  that  many  labiate  plants, 
such  as  mint  and  balm,  contain  most  bitter  and  volatile  princi- 
ples when  in  flower. 
"  Thus,  the  scientific  edifice  upon  which  materia  medica  rests 
is  falling  to  decay  ;  it  is  thus  that  the  minute  observations 
amassed  during  many  ages  of  experience  by  learned  men  who 
have  sacrificed  their  time  and  their  labors  to  the  relief  of  hu- 
manity, disappear. 
"  Taking  the  above  facts  into  consideration,  the  Society, 
whose  organ  I  am  this  day,  has  decided  to  put  to  the  assembly 
the  subject :  Of  the  influence  of  cultivation  upon  Medicinal 
Plants.  We  are  especially  desirous  that  to  the  data  already  ac- 
quired by  science  and  well  known  to  all,  may  be  added  chemical, 
pharmaceutical,  and  clinical  experiments,  in  order  to  determine 
in  a  material  and  irrefragable  manner  the  real  and  comparative 
values  of  wild  and  cultivated  plants,  so  as  to  put  an  end  to  the 
vagueness  and  confusion  which  the  practitioner  meets  with  when 
he  wishes  to  employ  any  medicinal  plant.  It  is  on  this  ground 
that  the  Society  invites  practitioners  desirous  of  proving  their 
zeal  for  science,  to  lend  the  support  of  their  experience  to  thera- 
peutics and  pharmacology,  in  order  to  enlighten  the  medical 
