Nature's medicine
The plant world is an immersive store of active chemical compounds point nearly half the medicine we use today or herbal in origin and a quarter contains plant extract for active Chemicals taken directly from plants point many more are yet to be discovered recorded and researched only a few thousands have been studied across the Global The Hunt will always be on to find species that could form the basis of new medicine.
Thousands of years ago the ancient egyptians discovered simple way to extract and use the active ingredients within plants
In ancient Greece in the 5th and 4th century BC, Hippocrates , the father of medicine , was already recommending asparagus and garlic for their diuretic qualities, poy as a way of inducing sleep and Willow leaves to relieve pain and fever .
As a result of trade with Africa and Asia the western world's store of herbal medicines , sandalwood , turmeric and Henna . For a long time , however , the use of both local plants and those with more distant origins was based on more or less fanciful beliefs . Local plants were carefully collected and widely used to make infusions , decoctions and ointments . These plants make up the major part of the traditional cures that we have inherited .
In the late 1700s , Carl wilheim Scheele , a gifted Swedish chemist , obtained tartaric acid from grapes , crtric acid from lemon andalic acid from apples , The techniques that he and his contemporaries used led to the isolation of the first purified compounds from plants that could be used as drugs . First came the beans in 1819 , quinine from cinchona bark and colchicine from meadow saffron both in 1820 and atropine from deadly nightshade in 1835 .
13 that generated considerable interest among scientist was the willow point in the early 1800 chemist from Germany Italy and France begin the search for the compound responsible for the acclaimed pain relieving effect of its bark. In 1828 the German pharmacist Jahann Buchner was the first to obtain salicin the major compound in a pure form point in 1838 the Talent chemist , Raffaele piria also obtained salicin acid from the bark by various chemical process. Bit these early compounds caused blisters in the mouth , and the stomach upsests when ingested .
Now Bayer decided to market the acetylsalicylic acid as a new pain relief and patened the compound acetylsalicylic acid in 1899 . At last from the Willow , the first modern drug was born , with 12000 tons of aspirin sold every year throughout the world , it has kept it's number one position.
From the 1930 onwards advance in chemistry have made it much easier to reproduce the active ingredient in plants but plant will continue to have medical importance in their own right point they are active constituents maybe slightly modified to improve their efficiency or to reduce their and desirable effect but they are still vital for the treatment of disorders such as cancer and heart diseases or as a mean of combating malaria and they remain the essence of herbal medicine and area that has still not been fully understood and explored.
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