From Ferdinand von Mueller to the Editor of the Sydney Mail   11 Feb 1884

Sir,— A recent number of your valuable journal contains an article in which Dr. Andrew Ross, of Molong, raises a complaint to the effect that researches of his had been passed on a recent occasion, when I gave publicity of what was known to me of the therapeutic value of the eucalypts.¹ The hon. gentleman's tone of writing would imply that I had studiously and purposely suppressed claims of his—claims which placed him foremost among those who brought the value of the eucalypts in surgical practice under notice. As in all my voluminous writings here, through more than 30 years, I have been most scrupulous to give every discoverer who came under my notice his full dues (indeed much more so than is customary in literature), I feel it incumbent on me to offer at once a ready explanation of what would appear a serious shortcoming of mine. Some month[s]² ago the highly respected editor and the very enterprising publisher of the Sydney Medical Gazette did me the honour of addressing to me a request for a literary contribution to that important periodical.³ In response I chose for my theme the therapeutic value of the eucalyptus oil as likely to interest the medical profession in these colonies and also abroad, more particularly so as an excellent publication of Professor Schulz, of Greifowald,⁴ on the same subject, printed two years ago, did not seem, to have come at all under the notice of the medical practitioners in Australia.⁵ In translating from Dr. Schulz's work, and augmenting the information from other sources (with due modesty hardly saying a word about myself, though eucalypts have been among the prominent objects of my field and laboratory studies in Australia ever since 1847), I did not for a moment hope that my contribution on this subject would be an exhaustive one, because in often futile endeavours to master the vast current literature of several sciences I felt that on this as on many other occasions I could not possibly do full justice to everyone connected with a question which, like this, has become already cosmopolitan. So also it was only rather recently that through Professor Naudin, of Antilles,⁶ I became informed of Sir William Macarthur having been the first to explain publicly the particular salubrious effect of eucalyptus vegetation on climates; so also still more recently I may have missed recording all the claims of successive observers on the origin of the Mellitose Manna, when dealing with this question in the Tenth Decade of the Eucalyptus Atlas.⁷ But there is a wide difference between not being aware of records and setting them designedly aside, and if Dr. Ross intends to attribute the latter course to me he does me a very deep injustice. In perfect candour, I frankly confess that I was not aware of Dr. Ross's important observations, brought under notice as far back as 1870, through the Sydney Medical Gazette (at a time when grave sorrows harassed my mind), to the effect that eucalyptus applications exercised such a marvellous antiseptic and healing influence on wounds; in fact (let me say, to my own discredit) I had never any regular and ready access to the former Sydney medical periodical, nor have I the slightest recollection of Dr. Ross's observations on the curative use made by our Autocthones of the eucalyptus foliage being in any way brought under my notice, as such a fact would likely have impressed itself vividly on my memory, though in a scientific correspondence, ranging annually from 2000 to 3000 letters, some data might pass perhaps from my collection. Let me assure Dr. Ross of my patriotic rejoicing that the honour reverts to Australia of establishing first of all the value of eucalypts in surgery, as his observations date from 1864, whereas the first real medical data on eucalypts, those by Drs. Trietany and Trixidor on the antipyretic value of the foliage of these trees, were published in 1865, and the surgical observations concerning eucalypts by French and other European professors somewhat later. May I venture to suggest that the original article of 1864 bearing on this subject should be republished for the sake of publicly establishing priority, as well as any subsequent observations by which Dr. Ross may have followed up his discovery. In justice to all concerned and in furtherance of medical science, I trust that what little I wrote— ill at the time— in the Sydney Medical Gazette will induce any physicians and surgeons who gained accurate experience on the therapeutic value of our many kinds of eucalypts to place on record their prior observations on the subject, and to bring any new data obtained by them before the medical profession on so powerful, extensive, and safe, yet still so much disregarded therapeutic agencies.—

I am, &c.

FERD. VON MUELLER.

Melbourne. February 11.⁸

Eucalyptus