โ Scribed by Bodemann, Wilhelm
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In 1918 it will be two hundred years that this, possibly the first printed contribution to American materia medica, was dedicated to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, by the Jesuit missionary who had been stationed at Sault Saint Louis, near Montreal, where he had discovered what the Indians called gurent- ongen or man-root. The discovery was not accidental but based on diligent search suggested by Father Jartoux, who had recently described the Chinese plant, the collection of which, by the Emperor's root hunters, he had witnessed in Tartarye Lafitau's original is rare and even a reprint published in 1858 by Verreau is scarce. Hence, though the therapeutic merits of the ginseng are no longer held in the esteem shown it by the Jesuit missionary, the historic significance of the drug is such as warrants a republication of Lafitau's Memoir, together with that of the older literature of Jartoux and other missionaries and naturalists. Moreover, its historic significance in this country is not restricted to its supposed therapeutic merits, believed in by missionary as well as Indians, but is one of great economic imports to the colonies and the early United States. SufIice it to point out in this connection that the first vessel that left an American port for China after peace with the mother country had been established, was laden with a cargo of ginseng, which enabled the early citizens of the newly established United States to secure tea and silk without money, but for a root that grew wild in their forests and that was to be had in quantity for the mere collecting. Somewhat later, ginseng was one of two articles which were of sufficient value to pay wagon freight from Kentucky over the Alleghanies to the Atlantic seaports.
The republication of Lafitau's Memoir, together with other original literature on the subject, has been made possible by the Hollister Pharmaceutical Library Fund of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
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