The Materia Medica of the Hindus, compiled from Sanskrit Medical Works c3.38

c3.38

I avail myself of this opportunity, publicly to tender my cordial thanks to those gentlemen who have assisted me in carrying this work through the press. To Dr. George King, Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, I feel myself particularly beholden. He has helped me most materially in a variety of ways, and has thereby enabled me to avoid many errors and mistakes. On many occasions he has spent hours in identifying various drugs for me; and he has revised nearly all the last proofs, before the sheets were printed. The recent names of plants in the glossary are entirely due to his pen, and they entailed on him considerable and tedious labour. Without these names I should have been obliged to content myself with the old names, gleaned from the works of Roxburgh and others, which are now only tolerated as synonyms, and which would have seriously impaired the usefulness of the glossary as a work of reference. I am indebted to him, likewise, for his permission to allow Babu Prasanna Kumar Sen, overseer of the Royal Botanic Gardens, to assist me in my enquiries, and this has enabled me to solve many a doubtful point in the translation of the scientific names of plants into the vernacular. During the absence of Dr. King from the Gardens, Mr. S. Kurz cordially helped me whenever I had occasion to seek his aid in identifying native medicines.