Robert Wight

“ One object of the present work is to remedy, in some degree, this defect, which even the most carefully drawn characters, cannot always avoid, owing to the inadequacy of language to find terms sufficiently precise for the designation of the innumerable forms which the vegetable kingdom presents, and especially for distinguishing the varying forms which the same plant, when produced under circumstances tending to increase or diminish its luxuriance, is apt to exhibit. ”

“ Our present knowledge of Indian medical plants is principally derived from the works of Drs. Fleming and Ainslie. These, for the most part, are little more than mere catalogues of native names of plants, with the botanical ones, so far as the authors had the means of ascertaining them, attached, but generally without descriptions, and in no instance with figures of the plants referred to, by which a person unacquainted with botany could ascertain the identity of specimens supplied by a native druggist, with the plant named in the catalogue ”

“ The insufficiency of language alone, to convey just ideas of the forms of natural objects, has led naturalists, ever since the invention of engraving, to have recourse to pictorial delineation, to assist the mind through the medium of the senses ”

“ We may now therefore fairly assume, that, under the double advantage of enjoying the fostering aid of the Supreme Government, and profiting by the flood of light which the unceasing labours of vegetable physiologists has of late years cast on the relationship existing between the natural affinities, botanically considered, and the active properties of plants, the time has arrived for making a rapid advance in this important department of medicine. ”

“ I may here observe that I am well aware of my present imperfections in the difficult art of Lithography, but, as every successive trial exhibits some improvement on the preceding one, I am encouraged to anticipate ample success, when some further practice has conferred skill in the management of the press and in the performance of the various manipulations to be gone through in the process of printing from stone, and trust that my first number will afford satisfactory evidence of the style in which the work will be finished ”

“ When we contemplate the impediments which these truly great men had to surmount in arriving at the eminence they justly attained in their favourite pursuit, partly originating m the imperfection of books treating of Indian plants, and partly from the engrossing duties they had to perform, the intervals of which, only, they could devote to botany, we cannot too much admire their perseverance and devotion to science ”

“ A cursory retrospect of the history of Materia Medica is sufficient to satisfy any one, however slightly conversant with the subject, that to complete a work of the kind contemplated by the Committee, of even moderate pretensions, is a task of great difficulty, owing to the many sources of error by which it is beset ”

“ These systems, embracing as they do the vegetation of the whole globe, are necessarily very concise, and the species so briefly described, as not seldom to render it next to impossible to identify the plant from its specific character. ”

“ The fact here stated, will no doubt account for some of the very contradictory statements we occasionally hear from practitioners, who have been separately using, as they supposed, the same medicine, one declaring it of great activity, while the other maintains that it is perfectly inert, or at least that its activity is far below what other accounts gave him reason to expect. ”

“ These Illustrations have been undertaken in the hope of effectually aiding the advancement of botanical science among us, and thereby extending our acquaintance with numerous curious and useful plants, the value of which is known to few, or the knowledge is confined to particular districts, though the plants themselves may be widely distributed ”