THE  AMEEICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
The  products  from  medicinal  plants  are  without  doubt  as  valu- 
able to  mankind  as  those  from  the  cereal,  vegetable,  fruit,  flower, 
fibre  and  other  economic  plants  under  cultivation.  The  latter  have 
all  yielded  to  the  principles  of  plant  breeding,  and  have  supplied 
man  with  a  wealth  and  variety  of  products  which  nature's  labor- 
atory has  never  equalled.-  Why  should  not  medicinal  plants  yield 
and  produce  in  a  similar  manner,  and  through  cultivation  and  im- 
provement be  made  to  furnish  mankind  with  more  efficient  remedies 
against  disease? 
An  examination  of  the  crude  vegetable  drugs  as  they  occur  on 
the  drug  markets  of  to-day  reveals  a  mass  of  inferior  materials 
far  in  excess  of  what  might  be  expected.  Much  of  this  material  is 
unfit  for  manufacturing  purposes,  through  adulteration  with  un- 
known and  worthless  admixtures,  partial  or  complete  substitution 
of  one  plant  or  plant  part  for  another,  old,  inert,  mouldy  drugs 
which  may  have  been  stored  under  adverse  conditions  or  collected 
out  of  season  and  improperly  cured  and  packed.  All  this  is  due  to  a 
lack  of  power  to  control  the  production  of  crude  vegetable  drugs. 
Too  much  must  be  left  to  nature  or  to  none  too  well  informed 
collectors.  The  faults  and  inefficiencies  of  nature  need  little  com- 
ment. A  comparison  of  a  few  improved  varieties  with  their  wild 
ancestors  is  sufficient  evidence  that  nature  is  poorly  equipped  for 
the  production  of  improved  strains. 
Ignorant  collectors  many  times  are  a  menace.  Personal  ex- 
perience with  many  of  them  has  revealed  an  absence  of  any  sense 
JULY,  igij 
BREEDING  MEDICINAL  PLANTS  * 
By  F.  A.  Miller,  B.S. 
*  Read  before  the  Plant  Section  of  the  American  Breeders'  Association 
at  the  meeting  held  in  Columbia,  South  Carolina,  January  25,  1913. 
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