Pharmacognosy is the study of plants or other natural sources as a potential source of drugs. is the study of physiological, chemical, chemical and environmental properties, the natural resources of medicinal plants.

Schmidt until his death was a professor at the medico-surgical Joseph Academy in Vienna; interestingly he was also Beethoven's physician. Shortly after the above publication, pharmacognosy reappeared in 1815 in the small work of Chr. Aenotheus Seydler entitled Analecta Pharmacognostica.

Pharmacognosy is closely related to botany and plant chemistry and, in fact, both originate from earlier scientific studies on medicinal plants.

By the early 20th century, the subject had become very advanced in terms of plants, concerned with the definition and identification of drugs, in both regions and in powder, and in their history, commercial, collection, preparation and storage.