Medicinal Herbs and their uses in pdf
Medicinal plants,also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditionalmedicine practices since prehistoric times.
- Plants synthesise hundreds of chemical compounds for functions including defenceagainst insects, fungi,diseases, and herbivorous mammals. Numerous phytochemicals with potential or established biological activity have been identified. However, since a single plant contains widely diverse phytochemicals, the effects of using a whole plant as medicine are uncertain.
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| Medical herbs and uses in pdf |
- Further, the phytochemical content and pharmacological actions, if any, of many plants having medicinal potential remain unassessed by rigorous scientific research to define efficacy and safety.In the United States over the period 1999 to 2012, despite several hundred applications for new drug status, only two botanical drug candidates had sufficient evidence of medicinal value to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
- The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilisation, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opiumare listed on clay tablets. The Ebers Papyrusfrom ancient Egypt describes over 850 plant medicines, while Dioscorides documented over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in De materia medica, forming the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years.
- Drug research makes use of ethnobotany to search for pharmacologically active substances in nature, and has in this way discovered hundreds of useful compounds.
- These include the common drugs aspirin, digoxin, quinine, and opium. The compounds found in plants are of many kinds, but most are in four major biochemical classes: alkaloids, glycosides, polyphenols, and terpenes.
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