Page:Botanic drugs, their materia medica, pharmacology, and therapeutics (1917).djvu/20

 such as Headland, while crediting botanic remedies, exploited little that was new. The rage for plant remedies had subsided, largely due to chemical advance in Europe.

Not so in America. There lies before me a quaint and not particularly creditable book, "The Practice of Medicine on Thomsonian Principles," by J. W. Comfort, M.D., and published in Philadelphia, in 1845. In the materia medica section, the first mentioned drug is lobelia inflata, to which is ascribed truly remarkable virtues and concerning which many foolish statements are made. Then follow capsicum, Thomson's composition powder (bayberry root bark, ginger, cayenne, and cloves), black pepper, ginger, bayberry, upland sumac, white pond lily, wild red raspberry, witch hazel, evan root, marsh rosemary, and numerous other American plants, few of which survive to-day as remedies. Nevertheless, some do remain, including lobelia, hydrastis, wild cherry, and some minor ones; so Samuel Thomson did not live in vain. His most creditable successors in the botanic field were Scudder and King of the Eclectic or "American" School, and who, despite a minority following in American medicine, really developed much of true value. But the dominant wing of the American medical profession were opposed to Thomson, Beach, Scudder, and all of the so-called "Botanies." The works of Trousseau, of France, dominated the thought of our writers on materia medica; and, indeed, this was rather fortunate, for Trousseau was a thoughtful and able man, whose writings were the very opposite in spirit from the vagaries of Thomson.