Herbs

"Herbs"

From beginning of human species, he used plants and herbs for cure diseases, relieve physical suffering and as a food. Our ancestors have a vast knowledge of herbs which are the most effective medicines for life. They find herbs on dangerous places like forests and hills. Some herbs are more powerful than modern medicines to save life.

Primitive peoples in all ages have some knowledge of medicinal herbs. In all the early civilizations there was much interest in drug plants. In China, as early as 5000 to 4000 B.C., many drugs were in use. There are Sanskrit writings in existence which tell of the methods of gathering and preparing drugs. The Assyrians, Babylonians and ancient Hebrews were all familiar with their use. Some of the Egyptian papyri, written as early as 1600 B.C., record the names of many of the medicinal plants used by the physicians of that time, among them myrrh, cannabis, opium, aloes, hemlock and cassia. the Greeks were familiar with many of the present time drugs, as evidenced by the works of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, and Theophrastus. Even in their highly developed civilization, however, the supernatural element was still uppermost. Only a few men were considered able, because of some special power, to distinguish between valuable and harmful plants.

The Romans were less interested in healing plants. However, in 77 B.C. Dioscorides wrote his great treatise, "De Materia Medica", which dealt with the nature and properties of all the medicinal substances known at that time. For fifteen centuries this work was held in high esteem, and even today it is valued by the Moors and Turks. Pliny and Galen also wrote about drug plants.

From this crude beginning the study of drugs and drug plants has progressed until now pharmacognosy and pharmacology are essential branches of medicine. As an indication of the way botany and medicine have gone hand in hand, even in comparatively recent times, may be mentioned the fact that great majority if the early botanists in the United States were also medical men.

For the purposes of economic botany we are most interested in that branch of medical science which deals with the drug plants themselves. This is pharmacognosy, and it is concerned with history, commerce, collection, selection, identification and preservation of crude drugs and raw materials. Pharmacology is the study of the action of drugs. Throughout the world several thousand plants have been and are still used for medicinal purposes. Many of these are known and utilized only by savage peoples or by herb doctors and dwellers in primitive places who are forced to depend on the native plants of the vicinity.

The medicinal value of drug plants is due to the presence in the plant tissues of some chemical substance or substances that produce a definite physiological action on the human body. The most important of these substances are the alkaloids, compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Glucosides, essential oils, fatty oils, resins, mucilages, tannins and gums are all utilized. Some of these materials are powerful poisons, so that the preparation and administering of the drugs should be left entirely in the hands of skilled pharmacists and physicians.

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