Ancient-Modern Concordance in Ayurvedic Plants: Some Examples

Abstract

In the early development of modern medicine, biologically active compounds from higher plants have played a vital role in providing medicines. For example, in the British Pharmacopoeia of 1932 (General Medical Council, London) over 70% of organic monographs were on plant-derived products. However, with the advent of synthetic medicinals and subsequently of antibiotics, the role of plant-derived therapeutic agents declined significantly (mostly) in the economically developed nations. On the other hand, even now 75--80% of the world population depends on crude plant drugs to tackle their health problems, and more significantly at least 130 drugs, all single chemical entities originally extracted from higher plants, or modified further synthetically, are globally in current use in modern medicine. Moreover, most of the recently introduced plant-based drugs have been innovative in character and represent outstanding contributions to therapeutics (Dev, 1997).