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Show Arkansas Farmers May Grow Drugs New Plants to Produce Narcotics, Digitalis A drug-farming program which may free the United States from reliance on foreign sources for many vital medicinal compounds has been launched in Arkansas by a transplanted Rumanian chemist, reports the magazine "Industrial and Engineering Chemistry." Dr. O. K. Cosla, a biochemist who instituted the first successful cultivation of drug-bearing plants in Rumania, is in charge of the Arkansas program at the College of the Ozarks, Clarksville, where a 20-acre tract has been set aside for his experiments. Dr. Cosla, who has an M. D. degree de-gree as well as a Ph. D. in biochemistry, bio-chemistry, used to export to the United States part of its drug sup- ply, and during World War II he furnished southeastern Europe with medicinal materials. If Dr. Cosla's plans mature, Arkansas Ar-kansas farmers will soon begin supplying sup-plying the nation with such drugs as belladonna, a narcotic; stramonium, stra-monium, a drug processed from dried Jimson weed which gives relief re-lief to asthma sufferers, and ergot, used to control blood hemorrhages and as an anesthetic. Foxglove, the dotted white and purple tubular flower whose leaves bear the powerful pow-erful heart stimulant digitalis, will also soon be blooming in Dr. Cos-la's Cos-la's medical garden. Some of the drug-bearing plants which Dr. Cosla is planning to cultivate culti-vate already grow wild in the Arkansas Ar-kansas backwoods. To determine the best conditions for growing each plant as a domestic crop, the Rumanian Ru-manian chemist will test them in hydroponic installations, in which their roots will be immersed in a watery solution containing mineral nutrients, instead of in soil. The active drugs will be extracted from the plants in a four-room laboratory which Dr. Cosla brought with him to this country to aid his research in biochemistry and experimental ex-perimental pharmacology. Dr. Cosla believes, according to "Industrial and Engineering Chemistry," Chem-istry," that the South can eventually even-tually become one of the nation's principal drug farming and manufacturing manu-facturing centers, thus diverting to the area millions of dollars now spent annually on imports. |