Human cultures have been using botanical products for medicinal purposes since the dawn of civilisation, as with the herbal knowledge of early civilisations subsequently extending to Europe and the Middle East. Of the estimated 300,000 higher plants available today, approximately 1% are used as foods and 10-15% have a documented medical use, although few of them have withstood the scrutiny of pharmacological evaluation. In the developing world plants remain the primary sources of medicine, with more than 60% of the world’s population relying on traditional medicine for their health care needs. Botanical products are used in various forms: the entire plant (or parts of it), as herbal materials (plant oils, juices or resins); or as herbal preparations (where purified or extracted compounds are mixed with other ingredients to make pills, powders, or topical preparations). While orthodox medicine uses drugs generally as single chemical entities, traditional medicine commonly uses plants as mixtures. The complexity of these mixtures poses significant challenges to the identification of active compounds and to ensuring the consistency of formulation and quality control of these preparations. This review examines some of today’s uses of botanical products in Indigenous cultures, traditional medical systems, as complementary medicine and as sources of new drugs.
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