Alexander Anderson (botanist)

== Medicines and Pharmacopeia ==

== Medicines and Pharmacopeia ==

Many of the plants and seeds that Anderson obtained via his foreign correspondents were considered pharmacologically significant. Historians have shown that the profound ecological turbulence wrought by the large-scale cultivation of sugar had by the eighteenth century created a demographically catastrophic disease environment for miscellaneous Caribbean ‘fevers’.<ref>{{Cite book|last=McNeill|first=J. R.|title=Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620 – 1914|publisher=Cambridge|year=2010|location=Cambridge|pages=14 – 55|language=English}}</ref> In St. Vincent, high mortality rates were generally attributable to [[yaws]], [[dysentery]], [[malaria]] and [[smallpox]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Burnard|first=T.|date=1999|title=The Countrie Continues Sicklie”: White Mortality in Jamaica, 1655 – 1780|journal=Social History of Medicine|volume=12/1|pages=55 – 59}}</ref> In a letter dated the 16th of February 1785, Anderson’s predecessor Dr. [[George Young (surgeon and botanist)|George Young]] had written to [[Robert Melvill|General Robert Melville]] expressing his concern for the British soldiers reportedly dying at a ‘rate of two to one’ during their first four years on the Island, with children – ‘almost all of three years of age’ – particularly vulnerable to ‘certain destruction in the West Indies’.<ref>Johnson, George W., ”The Cottage Gardener, and Country Gentleman’s Companion: Volume IX” (London, 1853). ‘Dr. George Young to General Melville’, p. 417. </ref>

{{botanist|A.Anderson|Anderson, Alexander}}

{{botanist|A.Anderson|Anderson, Alexander}}