Am.  Jour.  Pharm.J 
September,  1911.  f 
Teaching  of  Pharmacognosy. 
429 
of  a  2-hour  period.  The  result  was  one  of  confusion  to  the  student 
as  was  manifest  in  subsequent  examinations.  I  find  that  students 
are  better  able  to  recognize  crude  drugs  after  they  have  handled  a 
single  lot  during  several  hours,  including  the  making  of  sections 
and  the  examination  of  them  with  the  microscope. 
During  the  session  that  a  particular  drug  is  being  studied  by 
the  students  it  is  a  good  thing  to  break  up  the  monotony  of  the 
work  by  talking  about  the  plant  yielding  the  drug  and  if  possible 
by  having  some  growing  specimens  in  a  prominent  place  and  in 
addition  a  herbarium  specimen  of  the  plant  for  each  student.  At 
the  same  time  one  can  give  some  facts  regarding  the  distribution 
of  the  plant,  the  history  of  the  drug  and  its  important  constituents. 
In  this  way  a  student  is  enabled  to  concentrate  himsielf  upon  a 
single  drug,  and  thus  the  facts  impress  themselves  and  he  acquires 
a  knowledge  of  the  drugs  in  a  more  natural  way. 
Permanent  mounts  of  drugs  should  be  at  his  command  for  pur- 
poses of  microscopic  comparison.  The  sections  should  be  made 
by  the  student  and  these  should  not  only  be  cross-sections,  but 
tangential-longitudinal  and  radial-longitudinal  as  well.  He  should 
keep  a  record  of  his  observations  and  make  a  series  of  drawings 
illustrating  what  he  has  seen,  using  both  the  simple  microscope  and 
the  compound  microscope.  Sufficient  assistance  should  be  provided 
so  that  a  student's  questions  may  be  answered  and  his  specimens 
or  slides  examined,  as  he  should  not  leave  the  laboratory  without 
all  doubtful  points  being  made  clear. 
The  powdered  drug  should  be  examined  after  the  studies  on 
the  crude  drug  have  been  completed.  It  is  surprising  to  see  how 
the  student  views  the  whole  subject  after  he  has  spent  an  afternoon 
first  examining  the  crude  drug  with  the  naked  eye  and  the  aid  of 
the  simple  microscope,  then  making  sections  and  carrying  on  his 
studies  with  the  compound  microscope,  and  finally  working  with 
the  powdered  drug.  He  finds  that  the  study  of  powdered  drugs 
is  not  so  difficult  and  furthermore,  as  in  the  study  of  Belladonnje 
Folia  an  adulteration  of  poke  leaves,  is  more  readily  determined 
in  a  powdered  drug  than  in  the  crude  drug.  He  finds  as  a  matter 
of  fact  that  one  of  the  simplest  methods  in  the  examination  of  a 
number  of  drugs  that  may  seem  to  be  of  good  quality  is  to  take 
5  or  10  grams  of  the  material  selected  from  various  portions  of 
the  lot,  powder  it  in  a  small  mill  and  examine  the  powder  under 
the  compotind  microscope.     I  \\avv  seen  slndenls  again  and  again 
