Page:Botanic drugs, their materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics (1917).djvu/11



CHINESE physicians credit so many remedial agents that a work of forty volumes is devoted to their description and an outline of their uses. Dr. George Cheever Shattuck, in his work "A Synopsis of Medical Treatment," gives what might be called the Pharmacopeia of the Massachusetts General Hospital; and it comprises twenty-five pages, including therein mention of but twenty-four agents derived from botanic sources.

There are nineteen countries with well-based pharmacopeias, and they recognize five hundred and fifty botanic drugs. There are seventy-eight botanic drugs recognized in sixteen of these national standards, which covers the important list in world-wide commerce. Two hundred and thirty botanic drugs are recognized in but one or two pharmacopeias, twenty-nine of these being found only in the United States Pharmacopeia. Among these latter are: Bloodroot, cottonseed oil, oil of pimento, oil of chenopodium, sabal, stillingia, yerba santa, crampbark, leptandra, calendula, berberis, pereira, sassafras, and sumach. We attach importance to most of these; but so does Mexico to her native drugs, Japan to many that are esteemed there, and India to certain tropical species.

Each country has its own plant remedies; they are, often, especially adapted to the uses of the people, are readily procured at moderate cost, and