Neuroscience and Psychiatry: Open Access

Medicinal Plants

 Medicinal plants, also named as medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine performs since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for functions with defense against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. Numerous phytochemicals with potential or reputable biological activity have been known. However, since a single plant encloses widely varied phytochemicals, the effects of by a whole plant as medicine are uncertain. Further, the phytochemical contented and pharmacological actions, if any, of many plants having medicinal potential remain unassisted by rigorous scientific research to define efficiency and safety. The first historical records of herbs are originated from the Sumerian civilisation, where hundreds of medicinal plants with opium are listed on clay tablets. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who operated in the Roman army, familiar over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in the material medica,this made the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years. Drug study makes use of ethnobotany to exploration for pharmacologically active substances in nature, and has in this way exposed hundreds of useful compounds. These contain the communal drugs aspirin, digoxin, quinine, and opium. The compounds originate in plants are of many kinds, but most are in four major biochemical classes alkaloids, glycosides, polyphenols, and terpenes

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