Natural Compounds as Drugs, Volume I

The use of herbal medicines, their preparation and application in human therapy, was described for the first time in history by the Sumerians approximately 5000 years ago. Even earlier in India and China, a highly sophisticated medical system with plant-based therapies had been dev- oped. Along with the rise of the later empires, this knowledge was further expanded and institutionalized, while moving westwards to Egypt, Greece, and to the Arabic world, having a considerable influence on human th- apy – until today. Not all of these traditional medicines, although partially in medical practice still today, can be considered as efficacious or useful according to Western therapeutic standards, often due to the fact that the tra- tional disease categories cannot be easily translated into the “language” of Western medicine. The identification of active principles from plant preparations often failed, as the biological activity could not be enriched. However, there are numerous examples like morphine, quinine, salicylic acid, rivastigmine, digitalis glycosides, reserpine, or artemisinine, where the correlation between plant extract and the modern medicine, based on a single entity drug, was successfully established. All of these natural pr- ucts originated from traditional medical practice and opened the door to today’s medical indication areas, fundamentally enriching our knowledge of the pathophysiology and underlying biochemistry of diseases.