Medicinal plants
 |
| medicinal plants and herbs |
have been discovered since prehistoric times and used in traditional medicine. Hundreds of chemical components can be synthesized from plants to be used to control insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. Many plant chemicals with proven or potential biological activity were known, but the possession of a single plant for a large number of diverse chemicals made the effect of using the whole plant less effective, and prevented the evaluation of the activities related to these substances present in many plants in accurate scientific research aimed at determining their effectiveness and safety.
Medicinal plants were mentioned for the first time historically in the Sumerian civilization, as hundreds of medicinal plants, including opium, were listed on clay tablets in the thirtieth century BC. The Ebers Papyrus in ancient Egypt around 1550 BC described more than 850 medicinal plants. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who served in the Roman army, documented more than 1,000 prescriptions based on more than 600 medicinal plants in the Book of the Five Articles, and by AD 60, this book formed the basis of the pharmacopoeia for nearly 1,500 years.
Pharmaceutical research relied on popular botanical science to discover pharmacologically effective plants, and this led to the discovery of hundreds of beneficial ingredients that included aspirin, digoxin, quinine, and opium. These components are found in different types of plants, but most of them belong to four main biochemical classes: alkaloids, glycosides, polyphenols, and terpenes.
Medicinal plants are widely used in non-industrial societies as they are more readily available and cheaper than modern medicines. The global annual export value of thousands of plant species bearing medicinal properties was estimated at $2.2 billion in 2012, and in 2017, the value of the global market for medicines and plant extracts reached hundreds of billions of dollars. Many countries apply some kind of regulation to traditional medicine, but the World Health Organization organizes a network that encourages the safe and rational use of these plants. Medicinal plants face the global risk factors of climate change and environmental destruction, and qualitative factors such as excessive collection to meet market needs.
Prehistoric era
 |
| medicinal plants and herbs |
Many plants have been used for medicinal purposes in prehistoric times, including many herbs and spices in use today, without necessarily proven efficacy. Spices have been used to combat food-spoiling bacteria, especially in hot climates and in highly stale meat dishes. Angiosperms (flowering plants) were the original source of most medicinal plants, and human settlements often settled near places of growth of medicinal herbs such as nettles, dandelion, and tansy.
The use of medicinal herbs was not limited to humans, as this behavior appeared in some animals such as non-human primates, monarch butterflies, and sheep that ate these herbs when they were ill. Plant samples taken from prehistoric burial sites belong to the evidence that the Paleolithic people knew these herbal medicines. For example, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal burial site in northern Iraq called “Shanidar 4” produced a large amount of pollen from eight Botanical species of which seven are currently used in herbal remedies. Mushrooms were also found in the personal items of Ötzi's mummy, whose body had been frozen in the Ötz Alps for over 5,000 years, and which were also used to combat Trichuris caudatus.
ancient era
In ancient Sumer, hundreds of medicinal plants such as myrrh and opium were discovered mentioned in clay tablets from around 3,000 BC. More than 800 medicinal plants were listed in the Ebers Papyrus in ancient Egypt, including aloe, cannabis, castor, garlic, juniper, and yarrow. From ancient times to the present, Ayurvedic medicine mentioned in the texts of Azarveda, Rigveda and Sushruta Samhita has used hundreds of medicinally effective herbs and spices such as turmeric which contains curcumin. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia Shennong Ben Cao Jing mentioned various medicinal plants, such as the Chaulmogra tree, which was used in the treatment of leprosy, ephedra, and cannabis.
In the fourth century BC, Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, wrote the first systematic text on botany, researching plants, and around the year 60 AD, the Greek physician Dioscorides of the Roman army documented more than 1,000 prescriptions based on more than 600 medicinal plants in the Book of Five Articles Which remained the approved reference in medicinal herbs for more than 1,500 years, that is, until the seventeenth century AD.
middle ages
In the early Middle Ages, Benedictine monasteries preserved Europe's medical knowledge by translating and transcribing classical texts and tending herbal gardens. The German writer Heideggard Bingen wrote the book Reasons and Treatment in Medicine. In the Islamic Golden Age, scholars translated many classical Greek texts into Arabic, including the works of Dioscorides, adding their own notes. Herbology flourished in the Islamic world, especially in Baghdad and Andalusia.
Al-Qurtubi al-Zahrawi (936-1013) authored the “Book of Simple Vehicles” or “The Book of the Simple,” while Ibn al-Bitar (1197-1248) mentioned hundreds of medicinal herbs such as aconite (crown of kings), vomit nut, and tamarind in the collection of the simple. Avicenna's Canon of Medicine in 1025 A.D. included many medicinal plants, and Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, Ibn Zuhr, Boutros of Spain, and John of Saint-Amand authored more pharmacopoeia.
The beginning of modern times
The beginning of modern times saw a flowering of depictions of herbal plants across Europe beginning with the "Great Book of Herbs" in 1526. John Gerard wrote Herbs, or General History of Plants, in 1597 based on the information of the physician Rembert Dudowins, while Nicholas Culpeper published his Expansive English Medicines. Early modern exploration and the resulting Columbian exchange brought many medicinal plants to Europe, as livestock, crops, and technologies moved between the Old World and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Medicinal plants that reached the Americas included garlic, ginger, and turmeric, while coffee, tobacco, and coca moved from them to the rest of the world. In Mexico, the Badianus Codex "Compendium of Medicinal Herbs" of the 16th century described medicinal plants found in Mesoamerica.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries
 |
| medicinal plants and herbs |
The importance of plants in medicine changed radically in the nineteenth century with the application of chemical analysis techniques. Alkaloids were isolated from strains of medicinal plants beginning with morphine from poppy in 1806 followed by ipecac and styrax in 1817, and quinine was produced from eucalyptus and later from many other plants. New classes of pharmacologically active substances were discovered in medicinal plants with the development of chemistry, and the extraction of alkaloids (including morphine) began commercially in the Merck Group in 1826. Synthesis of the medicinal substance discovered in medicinal plants from salicylic acid began for the first time in 1853. With the end of In the nineteenth century, pharmacology began to oppose the use of medicinal plants because enzymes often modify the activity of medicinal ingredients when dried, and moved toward the use of alkaloids and glycosides extracted from plant matter. Medications discovered from medicinal plants maintained their importance during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and important anti-cancer drugs were discovered from the yew tree and Madagascar viburnum.