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Biodiversity plays a vital role in maintaining human and animal health because numerous plants, animals, and fungi are used in medicine to produce vital vitamins, painkillers, antibiotics, and other medications. [1] [2] [3] Natural products have been recognized and used as medicines by ancient cultures all around the world. [4]
The World Health Organization estimates, without reliable data, that some 80 percent of the world's population depends mainly on traditional medicine (including but not limited to plants); perhaps some two billion people are largely reliant on medicinal plants. [46] [49] The use of plant-based materials including herbal or natural health ...
phytotherapy: the study of medicinal use of plant extracts; phytochemistry: the study of chemicals derived from plants (including the identification of new drug candidates derived from plant sources); zoopharmacognosy: the process by which animals self-medicate, by selecting and using plants, soils, and insects to treat and prevent disease;
Paraherbalism is the pseudoscientific use of extracts of plant or animal origin as supposed medicines or health-promoting agents. [1] [6] [7] Phytotherapy differs from plant-derived medicines in standard pharmacology because it does not isolate and standardize the compounds from a given plant believed to be biologically active. It relies on the ...
Marine environments may contain over 80% of the world's plant and animal species. [6] The diversity of coral reefs can be extraordinary with species diversity reaching 1000 species per meter squared. The greatest marine tropical biodiversity is reported to be in the Indo-Pacific Ocean.
Architectural designs resembling plants appear in the capitals of Ancient Egyptian columns, which were carved to resemble either the Egyptian white lotus or the papyrus. [36] Ancient Greek columns of the Corinthian order are decorated with acanthus leaves. [37] Islamic art, too, makes frequent use of plant motifs and patterns, including on ...
A cat eating grass – an example of zoopharmacognosy. Zoopharmacognosy is a behaviour in which non-human animals self-medicate by selecting and ingesting or topically applying plants, soils and insects with medicinal properties, to prevent or reduce the harmful effects of pathogens, toxins, and even other animals.
Medical use of alkaloid-containing plants has a long history, and, thus, when the first alkaloids were isolated in the 19th century, they immediately found application in clinical practice. [206] Many alkaloids are still used in medicine, usually in the form of salts widely used including the following: [ 17 ] [ 207 ]