Flora Medica

PREFACE.THERE are probably few persons engaged in teachingBotany to medical students in this country, who havenot experienced great inconvenience from the want ofsome work in which correct systematical descriptions ofmedicinal plants are to be found, and which ischeapenough to be used as a class book. By the author, atleast, this has been so strongly felt, that he would longsince have made the present attempt at supplying thedeficiency had he been a medical man, or had he nothoped in each succeeding year that such a work wouldhave appeared from the pen of some writer of reputation,both as a botanist and pharmacologist. This expectationhas not been realised ;the necessity that students shouldhave access to a botanical account of the plants whichfurnish the substances used medicinally in different partsof the world, daily becomes more urgent; and hence thework now presented to the public makes its appearance.Under existing arrangementsit is chiefly from systematicalworks treating of the British Flora, that the studentof Botany derives his acquaintance with species; and asbut a small number of the plants found wild in thiscountry are either officinal, or of much medical value, heispractically excluded from any acquaintance with thoseimportant exotic species which it is most desirable for himso to study as to recognise them when he sees them. Thestudent therefore who isreally anxious to study Botanyfor those great purposes which render it so indispensable abranch of medical science, has been obliged to remainsatisfied with such general knowledge as he can obtainVA31114988