Drugs from Plants

Abstract

THE popular appetite for information about the healing virtues of plants has been abundantly catered for by books written from the angle of herbalism. It is a long and honourable tradition, and few incidents in the history of science can be better known to the layman than the original stimulus that came to the study of plants from the appreciation, however imperfect, of their value to medicine. Unfortunately, the outlook of these modern nearherbals remains medieval, and little popular attention has been directed to the large number of important vegetable drugs in the modern pharmacopoeias and to the fact that their number, as witness curare and penicillin, is still increasing. There is undoubtedly room for a book that will do something towards making clear to the layman the distinction between herbs and plant drugs.

Drugs from Plants

By Dr. Trevor Illtyd Williams. (Sigma Introductions to Science, 10.) Pp. 119 + 12 plates. (London: Sigma Books, Ltd., 1947.) 6s. net.