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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 , and herbivorous mammals .
The plant has been used for centuries in the South Pacific to make a ceremonial drink with sedative and anesthetic properties, with potential for causing liver injury. [117] Piscidia erythrina / Piscidia piscipula: Jamaica dogwood: The plant is used in traditional medicine for the treatment of insomnia and anxiety, despite serious safety ...
Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of medicinal plants dates back to the Paleolithic age, approximately 60,000 years ago. Written evidence of herbal remedies dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, who compiled lists of plants. Some ancient cultures wrote about plants and their medical uses in books called herbals.
Many hundreds of medicines are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in herbalism [12] [13] and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by ethnobotanical search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine. Modern medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine ...
The following is a table of drugs organized by their year of discovery. Naturally occurring chemicals in plants, including alkaloids, have been used since pre-history.In the modern era, plant-based drugs have been isolated, purified and synthesised anew.
With worldwide research into pharmacology as well as medicine, traditional medicines or ancient herbal medicines are often translated into modern remedies, such as the anti-malarial group of drugs called artemisinin isolated from Artemisia annua herb, a herb that was known in Chinese medicine to treat fever.
The use of plants for medicinal purposes, and their descriptions, dates back two to three thousand years. [10] [11] The word herbal is derived from the mediaeval Latin liber herbalis ("book of herbs"): [2] it is sometimes used in contrast to the word florilegium, which is a treatise on flowers [12] with emphasis on their beauty and enjoyment rather than the herbal emphasis on their utility. [13]
Some components of these toxins such as enzymes and inorganic salts are used in modern medicine. [21] For example, drugs such as Captopril and Lisinopril are derived from snake venom and inhibit the angiotensin-converting enzyme. [22] [21] Another example is Ziconotide, a drug from the cone snail, Conus magus, that is used to reduce pain. [21] [23]