Page:The medicinal plants of the Philippines (1901).djvu/16

 treated with native plants, I feel justified in the hope that their use will spread rapidly in the Philippines.

To employ therapeutically the drugs described in this work is not to experiment "in anima vilis," as some would have us believe. To experiment is to employ unknown remedies of unknown virtues and properties.

In this treatise I am not attempting to fix the indications for this or that product, but simply make known the diseases in which the Filipinos and the natives of other countries employ the products. Any physician has a perfect right to prescribe these drugs, as have also the "curanderos" and even the laity, with this difference, however, that the physician is capable of observing results and guiding himself by the physiologic action of the drugs. His knowledge of the physiologic and anatomopathologic problems of the human body, will enable the physician to make scientific inferences that would be hidden from the common "curandero."

As neither the Manila nor the provincial physicians keep those medicinal plants in stock, with the exception of those that official in the European and American pharmacopoeias, it will be necessary for the physician who wishes to use them, to busy himself with seeking them and laying them in sufficient stock to serve him when the opportunity presents itself. It is necessary to preserver them by drying and this is best done by exposing them several days to the fresh air in a dry place--for example, the corridors of the house--being careful not to expose them to the rays of the sun, in which latter event the fleshy and juicy plants which do not desiccate rapidly, putrefy or ferment.

A convenient way to get them is to visit the Binondo Square where there has been market for native drugs from time immemorial. The gardeners from the neighboring towns, especially those from Pasay and Singaln, regularly offer the plants for sale and will undertake to supply you with any that