Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/93

1837.] if he knew the plant—"yes, plenty grow here," was the reply, and the one brought was, as in the above instance, the Jatropha. I fortunately knew the difference, and was saved the trouble and disappointment of prescribing grain doses of a medicine that may be taken in half drachm ones, or many seeds, even, be eaten with impunity, provided the embryo, in which their activity is concentrated, be carefully removed. The fact here stated, will no doubt account for some of the very contradictory statements we occasionally hear from practitioners, who have been separately using, as they supposed, the same medicine, one declaring it of great activity, while the other maintains that it is perfectly inert, or at least that its activity is far below what other accounts gave him reason to expect. Such then is the present state of Indian Medical botany, and so long as this kind of uncertainty attaches to the investigations of those who endeavour to raise it to a higher rank in science, by carefully conducted experiment and observation, it is next to impossible that they can succeed, or that it can ever advance to that degree of perfection which it is now the anxious wish of the supreme government it should attain, and might under proper management be made to attain.

Our present knowledge of Indian medical plants is principally derived from the works of Drs. Fleming and Ainslie. These, for the most part, are little more than mere catalogues of native names of plants, with the botanical ones, so far as the authors had the means of ascertaining them, attached, but generally without descriptions, and in no instance with figures of the plants referred to, by which a person unacquainted with botany could ascertain the identity of specimens supplied by a native druggist, with the plant named in the catalogue; and, for want of plates, these, in all other respects valuable, works, to this day remain almost a dead letter. They, it is true, refer to works where botanical characters, and sometimes plates, are to be found, but the books so quoted are in few hands, some of them of great rarity, or so costly and bulky that few can afford to purchase them, or if they did, could conveniently carry them on a march: while Willdenow's Species Plantarum, in nearly all cases the leading authority, requires, on the part of the person consulting it, a proficiency in botany, to make out a plant from his brief characters, not easily acquired, and which few obtain.

When these authors published, such was the backward state of the arts in India, that, had they wished it, they could scarcely at any cost, short of sending their drawing to England to be engraved, have illustrated their works with figures of the plants named. Times are now greatly altered: the discovery of lithography, and its application to the representation of objects of natural history, has effected this