The pharmacological treatment of disease began long ago with the use of herbs. Methods of folk healing throughout the world commonly used herbs as part of their tradition.
Many conventional drugs originated from plant sources: a century ago, most of the few effective drugs were plant based. Examples include aspirin (willow bark), digoxin (from foxglove), quinine (from cinchona bark), and morphine (from the opium poppy).
Herbal drugs constitute only those traditional medicines which primarily use medicinal plant preparations for therapy. The earliest recorded evidence of their use in Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Syrian texts dates back to about 5000 years. The classical Indian texts include Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Charak Samhita and Sushruta Samhita.
Use of herbal medicines in developed countries has expanded sharply in the latter half of the twentieth century. The WHO monographs, describe the herb itself by a number of criteria (including synonyms and vernacular names) and the herb part commonly used, its geographical distribution, tests used to identify and characterize the herb (including macroscopic and microscopic examination and purity testing), the active principles (when known), dosage forms and dosing, medicinal uses, pharmacology, contra-indications and adverse reactions.
Unlike pharmaceutical products formulated from single-molecule chemicals produced synthetically or by isolation from natural source materials employing reproducible methods, herbal medicines consist of simple processed herbs or finished herbal products prepared from source materials containing a multiplicity of chemical constituents, the quality and quantity of which can vary from batch to batch due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
Herbal medicine – The use of medicinal plants as a basis of traditional medicine
