Flora Medica

In executing his task he has been much embarrassed todetermine within what limits to confine it. To be guidedby the last edition of the London Pharmacopoeia, or byany other work of the same description, would have manifestlybeen inexpedient, because all such books are fromtheir very nature circumscribed, and confined in theirapplication to some particular place. To have thus limitedthe present work, would have entirely defeated one of thefirst objects set before himself by the author in the executionof it the indication of what remedial agents areemployed in other countries, but not yet introduced intoEnglish practice.No one will be bold enough to assertthat the physician already possesses the most powerfulagents produced by the vegetable kingdom for every year;is bringing some new plant into notice for its energy,while others are excluded because of their inertness. Intropical countries, where a fervid sun, a humid air, anda teeming soil give extraordinary energy to vegetablelife, the natives of those regionsoften recognisetheexistence of potent herbs unknown to the European practitioner.No doubt such virtues are often as fabulous, andimaginary, as those of indigenous plants long since rejectedby the sagacity of European practice. But we are notaltogether to despise the experience of nations less advancedin knowledge than ourselves, or to suppose becausethey may ascribe imaginary virtues to some of their officinalsubstances, as has been abundantly done by ourselves informer days, that therefore the remedial properties of theirplants are not worth a serious investigation ; or that theirmedical knowledgeis beneath our notice because they areunacquainted with the terms of modern science. It is notmuch above twenty years since an English officer in Indiawas cured of gonorrhoea by his native servant, after theskill of regular European practitioners had been exhausted:the remedy employed was Cubebs, the importance of whichwas previously unknown, and the rationale of whose actionis to this day beyond the discovery of physiologists. Itis of undoubted value in urethral catarrh : and who shallvii A 4