Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/100

 XIX

SOME NOTED DRUGS.

Who was the first cultivator of corn? Who first tamed and domesticated the animals whose strength we use, and whom we make our food? Or who first discovered the medicinal herbs which from the earliest times have been our resource against disease?


 * Sermon on The World's Benefactors.

The most valuable and original records of the history of drugs are to be found in "Pharmacographia" by F. A. Flückiger of Strasburg and Daniel Hanbury of London (published by Macmillan & Co.). I have as a rule avoided copying details from that work, although I have dealt with no subject without referring to it. In this section, however, the drugs named are of course treated in "Pharmacographia," and necessarily the facts given must to some extent correspond. But comparison would show that I have only selected subjects which were capable of discussion from a somewhat different point of view from that which guided Messrs. Flückiger and Hanbury.

Dioscorides is the earliest medical writer to mention aloes as a medicine. According to him it should be