Many a delicate vine creeps up a tree-support, and finally in ingratitude squeezes the life out of its friendly helper. There are plants that grow in air and have no roots, and others, like the fungi, have no leaves. Nor, in describing vegetation, can we truly say that a plant has no power of voluntary motion, or yet that it is wholly devoid of a something akin to intelligence. Habit, may be the reply. Superficially it may be defined as the study of plant structures used in medicine, and of the preparations made therefrom.
Every housewife is a pharmacist, every loaf of bread is a pharmaceutical preparation.
Audacious would be the man, who, because he uses scientific terms and authoritative books, and mixes his ingredients by means of a mortar in a shop or laboratory, claims thereby that he is the only pharmacist. Fruits grow and then ripen. Fruits and seeds are used in home pharmacy, and likewise sugar in the making of preserves, jellies, in canning, etc. In fact, old-time pharmacy, with its cordials, elixirs, sweetened mixtures, paste confections such as confections of roses, fig and senna, pillular or in mass, wedges very closely into home culinary manipulations. And even closer relationships are bred by systematic observers of foods.