34S  Cultivation  of  Medicinal  Plants.       {A  A*u^t'  SS™1' 
have  relied  upon  the  law  of  supply  and  demand.  We  have  not  hesi- 
tated to  ravish  the  earth  to  fill  the  drug  warehouses,  and  when  the 
drug  granary  was  overflowing  we  lowered  the  price  to  choke  off  the 
inflow. 
For  the  moment  the  acres  in  Europe  where  drugs  grow  have  been 
furrowed  with  trenches  of  the  contending  armies,  and  the  soil  has 
been  enriched  by  the  bodies  of  the  slain.  This  latter  statement  is 
literally  true  in  respect  to  portions  of  Belgium,  France  and  some  of 
the  Polish  provinces.  So  far  as  the  continental  drug  supplies  are 
concerned,  we  can  await  the  faltering  slow  recovery  in  the  after- 
math of  the  war,  we  can  trust  to  favoring  or  unfavoring  winds — we 
can  let  it  alone. 
Manufacturers  of  medicine  have  never  given  serious  attention  to 
the  cultivation  of  native  drugs.  For  fifty  years  the  husbanding  of 
the  supply,  and  cultivation,  have  been  urged,  with  little  avail.  We 
shall  find  scarcely  any  relief  from  the  farming  industry.  Drug 
plants  are  such  a  specialized  crop  in  comparison  with  food  products, 
and  so  limited  in  demand,  that  we  may  at  once  forestall  any  hope  that 
the  farmer  will  ever  supply  us  with  little  else  than  packing  straw. 
The  suggestion  made  by  the  writer,  that  every  pharmacist  might 
cultivate  drugs  in  his  home  garden,  has  been  criticised.  Continental 
druggists,  by  this  method,  as  well  as  augmenting  their  supply  by 
purchasing  from  their  neighbors,  fill  their  home  demand  and  at  times 
accumulate  a  surplus  for  the  market.  Were  the  thousands  of  Ameri- 
can pharmacists  to  raise  a  few  pounds  of  drugs,  the  effect  would  be 
apparent,  and  if  these  pharmacists  would  apply  their  training  in 
science  to  this  work,  we  could  hope  for  some  enlightenment  upon 
the  drugs  which  we  use.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  recommend  to  every 
member  of  this  association  to  prepare  now  and  put  in  his  back  yard 
a  few  drug  plants  such  as  he  uses  in  his  laboratory.  He  will  possibly 
receive  some  pleasure  and  not  a  little  edification  from  his  effort. 
The  situation  seems  to  be  that  for  drug  plants  there  are  no  vast 
regions  where  millions  of  pounds  of  plants  are  produced  industrially. 
There  are  less  than  a  score  of  places  in  the  world  where  they  are 
cultivated,  and  from  these  places  but  little  reaches  our  market.  For 
the  most*  part  our  drugs  come  from  the  lower  peasant  people,  includ- 
ing the  "  mountain  whites  "  of  our  own  land.  By  handfuls  they 
accumulate  at  some  central  point,  and  then  by  a  circuitous  route  reach 
the  laboratory.  There  can  never  be  a  certainty  or  a  uniformity  of 
supply — there  can  never  be  an  improved  supply.    The  advance  of 
