Flora Medica

PREFACE.say that there are not hundreds of equally powerful remediesstillremaining to be discovered. Look to Hemidesmusindicus, the source of Indian Sarsaparilla,themost active medicine of that name now known to theEnglish physician, although excluded from the Pharmacopoeia;to Chloranthus officinalis, unrivalled in Java forits aromatic properties and powerful stimulatingeffects ;Soymida febrifuga, Galipea officinalis, and Cedrela Toona,which, at least, rival the Jesuit's bark in their influence overthe most dangerous fevers to ; Erythroxylon Coca one of themost active stimulants of the nervous system ; or, finally,consider the accounts we have of the effects of JamaicaDogwood, Piscidia Erythrina, which, if there isany truthin medical reports, must be a narcotic superior to opiumfor many purposes ; and it must be sufficiently apparentto all unprejudiced minds, that the resources of the vegetablekingdom, far from being exhausted, have hardly yetbeen called into existence. It ispresumptuous for thetheorist to assert that he already possesses a remedy " forall the maladies that flesh is heir to;"toit is mere idlenessin the routine practitioner, carried away by the attractionof specious generalities, to fancy that one tonic is as goodas another tonic, or one purgative as another purgative.In reality the true cause of the different actions of medicinesupon the human body is admitted by the highest authoritiesto be wholly unknown ;and surely this is in itselfthe best of all reasons why we should not assume that wealready possess against disease all the remedies whichnature affords ;on the contrary, it should stimulate us toreiterated enquiriesinto the peculiar action of new remedialagents.The medical student rarely knows, at the time when heis acquiring his professional education, what his after destinywill be. A large proportion of the young men whofrequent the class-rooms are scattered to all the corners ofthe earth ;they are perpetually liable to be cut off fromsupplies of the drugs of the Pharmacopoeia, and then aredriven upon their own resources; and they find the medicines