Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/92

72 appertaining to the objects of the Madras Journal, than to one exclusively devoted to medicine.

The report, which appears to have for its object that of showing the course to be pursued in forming an Indian Pharmacopoeia, has not yet, so far as I have learned, reached Madras, and as the notice I have seen does not mention the measures which the Committee propose to pursue for the improvement and extension of our knowledge of that department, my remarks and suggestions will be entirely confined to it.

A cursory retrospect of the history of Materia Medica is sufficient to satisfy any one, however slightly conversant with the subject, that to complete a work of the kind contemplated by the Committee, of even moderate pretensions, is a task of great difficulty, owing to the many sources of error by which it is beset ; and such a work can only be raised to the first rank, by the alow accumulation of experience, resulting from repeated experiment and observation, carefully distinguishing, at every step, between the jarring coincidences of port hoc and propter hoc: the result of which, in many instances, will be, to discard, as inert, medicines which have long enjoyed unmerited reputation, the removal of each of which must be esteemed an advance towards perfection.

The Hindoo Materia Medica, like that of all other nations but little advanced in civilization, is no doubt loaded with many such unworthy articles, but probably not much more so than those of Europe were two certuries ago; of these some may at once be struck out; others, however, can only be removed by the tedious process above specified. On the other hand it embraces many medicines of vast activity, but with whose powers, and the methods of administration best suited to elicit them, we are yet comparatively unacquainted. To detect error in the one case, and to ascertain the existence of valuable properties in the other, the same course must be followed, and not by one roan, or in one place, but by many, and in different situations, each, moreover, making sure that he is experimenting on the same plant.

This last precaution is of greater importance than some might sup- pose. I have repeatedly had wrong plants brought to me, when I had no other means of making known the one wanted, than by reference to the native name assigned in Ainslie's Catalogue, and I have also seen two persons sent in different directions for the same plant, bring different ones, each insisting that his was the true one, and some times both at variance with the systematic name given as the synonym. I know an instance where a gentleman experimented most perseveringly with the common physic-nut (Jatrophacurcas) on the supposition that it was the true Croton tiglium, being brought to him by his dresser as the plant so named in Ainslie's Materia Medica. The very same thing happened to myself and on the same authority; I simply put the book into my native dresser's hand, made him read the name, and asked him