% > PREFACE TO THE ELEVENTH EDITION. No material changes have been made in the text of this work in this edition other than the correction of a few errors. An important addition, however, has been made in the introduction of a consideration of the Colloids in Chemistry, by the greatest of pharmacists, Professor John Uri Lloyd, Pharm. M., Ph. D., LL. D., of Cincinnati, Ohio. This study of this important department of Pharmacy by Professor Lloyd, promises to lead to the development of theories not before touched upon, and to truths which will clear up much doubt, and elucidate much that has not been satisfactorily explained. It will also probably lead to an explanation of the definite therapeutic activities of a large and important group of plant drugs, which are not possessed of any single active principle, and yet possess therapeutic properties, definite and reliable, each with a characteristic dynamism which renders it of essential value in the cure of disease. It is the author’s wish that the knowledge brought up to this advanced period in this work, will help to lead the profession, as a whole, out of the present confusion of Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic doubt in one field at least, that because of its truth and stability, is proving satisfactory to the most exacting requirements of many thousands of unprejudiced thinkers, in the study of direct drug action. Finley Ellingwood. \ 4

PREFACE. In the twenty-one years that have elapsed since Ellingwood’s Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy in its original form was published, so great are the changes that have taken place in the practice of medicine; so many are the discoveries that have been made and the theories and new measures that have been advanced, and so many are the new remedies that have been brought forward, that I have thought best to rewrite that work almost entirely, and to put it out in a different form. In the time specified, advancement has been made in every branch of therapy. In the two or three decades prior to that time a prejudice had slowly developed against the use of plant drugs, and this still influences many. However, the knowledge of the superior action of the alkaloids has rendered many of these indispensable. Furthermore, the securing of a definite, advanced, accurate, and reliable knowledge of the action of those agents which are made from the plant in whole or in part, and especially* since the manufacturers of the Specific Medicines have so perfected this form of fluid medicines, that they can always be depended upon to secure accurate results; all this has given to the profession a confidence in these drugs that is irresistible, because based upon their rational, organic, and invariable character. Again the foreign supply of drugs of every kind has been cut off so fully by the European war, that American physicians have their attention forced upon American products, and they are quickly learning that our drug products are amply sufficient, with a little readjustment in some cases, to meet every possible moderate demand of every branch of our profession. This is indeed gratifying to those who have long studied these drugs in their every possible character and influence, and have learned all their superior qualities and have witnessed the immediate and superior influences in innumerable cases. This leads to a more general use, and this use confirms the impression made upon the mind of the prescriber that organic remedies have constant, subtle, invariable properties that no other class of remedies can possibly possess. This brings us nearer than ever before to a general recognition of plant drugs — organic remedies — as the true medicines for human ailments, just as organic foods are the only foods for man in health. Artificial foods are only readjustments of chemical and physiological food principles in organic form. All this has caused me to desire to produce a work on American Medicines that will fully supply the immediate demands of American, physicians, to give the profession at large the results of the investigations, observations, experiences, and successful uses of the class of medicines above named, which have been secured during the past century, and to bring this up with every essential proven fact, to the beginning of the year 1919. In this work every statement has been weighed. Every fact has been estimated fully in order that it shall be accurate. The best known author5