Herbal Medicine, also called Phytotherapy or Phytomedicine, has been around since the beginning of recorded history. It is defined as the “therapeutic use of medicinal plants as substitutes for or in combination with pharmaceutical drugs”. Many countries still rely solely on the medicinal effect that herbs have and use them as part of their practice. In the United States, herbal medicine generally refers to a system of medicine that uses European or North American plants. Traditional Chinese medicine uses plants native to China or Asia, while Ayurvedic herbal medicine uses plants native to India.
Herbal medicine is a practice that is as old as mankind, and certainly older than agriculture or writing; every human culture on every continent of the Earth has practiced herbal medicine of one form or another. Perhaps best described as "medicinal botany", herbal medicine involves taking plants, ingesting them, and seeing if some of the elements in the plant have a palliative effect on the symptoms of the ailment. Herbal remedies have formed the basis of traditional medicine for millennia, and have formed the root of modern pharmacology. While science from roughly the 1880's onwards has striven to isolate the active compounds found in medicinal herbs, the list is ever growing Among the healing agents isolated from herbal remedies are salicylic acid (aspirin), derived from white willow bark, the vincristine series of anticancer agents, derived from periwinkle, several stimulants (such as ephedra and cocaine) and several analgesics and paralytics (such as morphine, a tincture of the opium poppy). As medical science has delved into molecular biology, and the ways these compounds work has been explored, validation for a number of types of herbal remedies have been found, including phytochemicals used as anti-oxidants, and the benefits of various vitamins for the body, and the use of Echinacea to boost white blood cell counts for fighting off disease.
Herbalism is a traditional medicinal or folk medicine practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. Herbalism is also known as botanical medicine, medicinal botany,[1] medical herbalism, herbal medicine, herbology, and phytotherapy. Sometimes the scope of herbal medicine is extended to include fungi and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts.
Many plants synthesize substances that are useful to the maintenance of health in humans and other animals. These include aromatic substances, most of which are phenols or their oxygen-substituted derivatives such as tannins. Many are secondary metabolites, of which at least 12,000 have been isolated — a number estimated to be less than 10% of the total. In many cases, these substances (particularly the alkaloids) serve as plant defense mechanisms against predation by microorganisms, insects, and herbivores. Many of the herbs and spices used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds.
