Pedanius Dioscorides, "the father of pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De materia medica, a 5-volume Greek encyclopedic pharmacopeia on herbal medicine and related medicinal substances, that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. For almost two millennia Dioscorides was regarded as the most prominent writer on plants and plant drugs.
Herbal medicine is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. With worldwide research into pharmacology, some herbal medicines have been translated into modern remedies, such as the anti-malarial group of drugs called artemisinin isolated from Artemisia annua, a herb that was known in Chinese medicine to treat fever. There is limited scientific evidence for the safety and efficacy of many plants used in 21st-century herbalism, which generally does not provide standards for purity or dosage. The scope of herbal medicine sometimes includes fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts.
Ethnobotany is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of natural and social sciences that studies the relationships between humans and plants. It focuses on traditional knowledge of how plants are used, managed, and perceived in human societies. Ethnobotany integrates knowledge from botany, anthropology, ecology, and chemistry to study plant-related customs across cultures. Researchers in this field document and analyze how different societies use local flora for various purposes, including medicine, food, religious use, intoxicants, building materials, fuels and clothing. Richard Evans Schultes, often referred to as the "father of ethnobotany", provided an early definition of the discipline:
Ethnobotany simply means investigating plants used by primitive societies in various parts of the world.
Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical, and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources".
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, against parasites and herbivorous mammals.
Cannabis tea is a cannabis-infused drink prepared by steeping various parts of the cannabis plant in hot or cold water. Cannabis tea is commonly recognized as an alternative form of preparation and consumption of the cannabis plant, more popularly known as marijuana, pot, or weed. This plant has long been recognized as an herbal medicine employed by health professionals worldwide to ease symptoms of disease, as well as a psychoactive drug used recreationally and in spiritual traditions. Though less commonly practiced than popular methods like smoking or consuming edibles, drinking cannabis tea can produce comparable physical and mental therapeutic effects. Such effects are largely attributed to the THC and CBD content of the tea, levels of which are drastically dependent on individual preparation techniques involving volume, amount of cannabis, and boiling time. Also in common with these administration forms of cannabis is the heating component performed before usage. Due to the rather uncommon nature of this particular practice of cannabis consumption in modern times as well as the legality of cannabis throughout the world, the research available on the composition of cannabis tea is limited and based broadly around what is known of cannabis as it exists botanically.
Ethnoveterinary medicine (EVM) considers that traditional practices of veterinary medicine are legitimate and seeks to validate them. Many non-Western traditions of veterinary medicine exist, such as acupuncture and herbal medicine in China, Tibetan veterinary medicine, Ayurveda in India, etc. These traditions have written records that go back thousands of years, for example the Jewish sources in the Old Testament and Talmud and the Sri Lankan 400-year-old palm-leaf frond records of veterinary treatments. Since colonial times scientists had always taken note of indigenous knowledge of animal health and diagnostic skills before implementing their Western-technology projects.
Traditional Brazilian medicine includes many native South American elements, and imported African ones. It is predominantly used in areas where indigenous groups and African descendants reside, like in the northeast coast, nearly all interior regions including Amazon regions, savannahs, rainforest, foothills, and Pantanal. According to Romulo R. N. Alves, "although Brazil's health system is public...use of traditional remedies and rituals provide an economical way of healing for much of the populace, but that also does not mean that wealthy Brazilians don't seek it out as well. Traditional medicine is a deep part of Brazilian heritage."
Traditional African medicine is a range of traditional medicine disciplines involving indigenous herbalism and African spirituality, typically including diviners, midwives, and herbalists. Practitioners of traditional African medicine claim, largely without evidence, to be able to cure a variety of diverse conditions including cancer, psychiatric disorders, high blood pressure, cholera, most venereal diseases, epilepsy, asthma, eczema, fever, anxiety, depression, benign prostatic hyperplasia, urinary tract infections, gout, and healing of wounds and burns and Ebola.
Christophe Wiart is a French scientist.
In the field of drug discovery, classical pharmacology, also known as forward pharmacology, or phenotypic drug discovery (PDD), relies on phenotypic screening of chemical libraries of synthetic small molecules, natural products or extracts to identify substances that have a desirable therapeutic effect. Using the techniques of medicinal chemistry, the potency, selectivity, and other properties of these screening hits are optimized to produce candidate drugs.
This article is about traditional Hausa medicine practised by the Hausa people of West Africa. Hausa medicine is heavily characterized by Islamic influence and traditional, African-style herbology, and religious practices which are still prevalent today. Many traditional healing methods such as religious and spiritual healing are often used alongside modern medicine among Hausa villages and cities.
Cuscuta chinensis Lam. is a stem holoparasite vine in the family Convolvulaceae. It was first described in China in 1786.
A drug class is a group of medications and other compounds that share similar chemical structures, act through the same mechanism of action, have similar modes of action, and/or are used to treat similar diseases. The FDA has long worked to classify and license new medications. Its Drug Evaluation and Research Center categorizes these medications based on both their chemical and therapeutic classes.
Insects have long been used in medicine, both traditional and modern, sometimes with little evidence of their effectiveness.
Ina Vandebroek is an ethnobotanist working in the areas of floristics, ethnobotany and community health. Since 2005, she has worked at the New York Botanical Garden in the Institute of Economic Botany. She has worked on ethnobotanical projects in North America, the Caribbean, and South America.
The medical ethnobotany of India is the study of Indian medicinal plants and their traditional uses. Plants have been used in the Indian subcontinent for treatment of disease and health maintenance for thousands of years, and remain important staples of health and folk medicine for millions. Indians today utilize plants for both primary medical care and as supplementary treatment alongside modern medical science. It is estimated that 70% of rural Indians use traditional plant based remedies for primary healthcare needs. This reliance of plants for medicine is consistent with trends widely observed in the developing world, where between 65% and 80% of people use medicinal plant remedies.
Djaja D. Soejarto is an Indonesian-born botanist, ethnobotanist, pharmacognosist, academic and author. He is an adjunct curator at the Field Museum of Natural History as well as professor emeritus in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and at the Pharmacognosy Institute of the College of Pharmacy, the University of Illinois at Chicago.
