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Medicinal Plants

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Ancient archaeological records of

medicinal plants

3500 BCE - India had an extensive pharmacopoeia.Much of that knowledge is still used as part of theAyurveda medical system

2250 BCE Egypt and Babylon were trading

medicinal plants900 BCE - Archaeological records demonstrate the

use of medicinal and psychoactive plants in theNew World

330 BCE - One of the Theophrastuss students,Alexander the Great, sent medicinal plants fromAsia back to Greece for cultivation

2000 YA - The first written Chinese recordsalthough use is probably as ancient as Indias

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Use of Medicinal Plants

Use of medicinal plants developed from

informal experimentation and based on a

general familiarity with medicinal plants.This knowledge was amassed via

experimentation over many generations and

was handed down orally from person toperson often woman to woman in

traditional cultures.

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Theophrastus

370-285 BCE

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History of Herbals

Dioscorides, in the 1st Century AD, was a Greekphysician who described the medicinal properties

of plants - he described the use of 500 species of

plants in his bookDe Materia Medica

The first herbal written in the Anglo-Saxon worldwas an 11th Century book known as the

Herbarium of Apuleius Platonicus

The first herbal to break from Dioscorides andprint descriptions of local flora, with accurate

drawings of the plants was by Leonhart Fuchs, his

extremely well illustrated herbalDe Historia

Stirpium was published in 1543

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Page from Vienna Dioscorides

Arabic 6th

Century

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Page from Arabic edition of

Dioscorides herbal 1334

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Title page from Fuchs

herbal 1543

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Page from Fuchs Herbal 1543

Aconitum or Wolfs bane

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More from Fuchs Herbal 1543

Nicotiana - Tobacco

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English Herbals

The earliest printed English herbal was anonymous

volume from 1525 published by Richard Banckes

In 1526, Peter Treversi published an English translation of

a French herbal

In 1538, William Turner published an herbal entitled

Libelluls de re Herbaria Novus

In 1551, Henry F. Lyte published an English translation of

Rembert Dodoens herbal Stirpium Historiae Pemptades

Sex which was valued because of its all inclusive treatment

of many plants and excellent plates illustrating flowers

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Best English Herbals

In 1597, John Gerard published his outstandingbookThe Herball, Or Generall Historie of Plantes

- it is a huge volume of 1392 pages and 2200

woodcut illustrations of plants - it was widely

used by physicians and became widely quoted andreferenced - the book has remained in print for

400 years

The last major herbal published in English wasJohn Rays herbal, published in 1688 - it is also a

major taxonomic work and Ray was the first

person to divide the flowering plants into two

main groups - the dicots and monocots

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Cover of

Gerards

Herbal

1597

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Page from Gerards Herbal - 1597

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Title Page of John Rays

Herbal - 1688

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Page from John Rays Herbal - 1688

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Ginseng root Panax

pseudoginseng

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Foxglove

Digitalis purpurea

Foxglove may be

useful as a way to

cure people ofgrosse and slimie

flegme and

naughtie humors from Gerards

Herbal - 1597

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William Withering

- holding a foxglove

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Witherings work on Foxglove

Began experiments with foxglove in 1775 -Withering had heard about an old family cure fordropsy

Reported his findings in a paper published in1785, An Account of the Foxglove and Some of

its Medical Uses Powdered foxglove leaf is still prescribed in

tablets or capsules to treat congestive heart failure

The somewhat crude powdered drug is called

Digitalis after the plant Foxglove produces more than 30 different cardiac

glycosides - two in particular - Digoxin andDigitoxin are produced from foxglove and

prescribed to heart patients around the world today

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Foxglove - Digitalis purpurea

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Urgent need to study medicinal plants

The utility of plants in current therapy

There has been a rush to develop synthetic

medicines based on plant medicines, butoften the synthetic medicines dont work

as well as the original plant medicines.

For example quinine and malaria

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Efficacy of Quinine

Quinine is traditional and effective preventative ofmalaria

Synthetic preventatives such as chloroquine,maloprim, and fansidar have largely replaced theuse of quinine

Many strains ofPlasmodium have developed

resistances to the synthetics and the synthetics aremore toxic. It is recommended that people do nottake fansidar for more than 3 months due to

potential liver damage.

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Malaria Cycle

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Anopheles freeborni mosquito intermediate

host and vector forPlasmodium sp.

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Historical distribution of Malaria

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Red areas show countries with malaria today

O f th f Q i i

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One of the sources of Quinine

Cinchona succirubra

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Cinchona pubescens

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Timeline of Quinine Use

1633, a Jesuit priest named Father Calancha described howto use quinine bark to cure fevers

1645 Father Bartolome Tafur took some bark to Rome andmany of the clergy used it

Cardinal John de Lugo wrote a pamphlet to be distributedwith the bark - use of the bark became so widespread thatin the papal conclave of 1655 no one died of malaria

1654 English aware of use of quinine bark

1735, a French botanist named Joseph de Jussieu

journeyed to South America and found and described thetree that is the source of the bark - he sent samples toSweden where in 1739, Carl Linneaus named the treegenus Cinchona

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Timeline of Quinine Use 20 to 40 species ofCinchona - the species are very

hard to tell apart and the species will hybridize, sothe exact number of species is unknown mostlyunderstorey trees

1820 the French chemists Joseph Pelletier and

Joseph Caventou isolated the alkaloid quininefrom the bark and identified it was the activeingredient in Peruvian bark

1861, an Australian named Charles Ledger

obtained seeds from an Aymara Indian namedManuel Incra

by 1930, the Dutch orchards in Java produced 22million pounds of quinine, 97% of the worlds

market

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Charles Ledger 1818-1906

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Chemical structure of quinine

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Properties of Quinine

Quinine itself is an odorless white powder with an

extremely bitter taste

It can be used to treat cardiac arrhythmias as wellas malaria - it is also used as a flavoring agent

Quinine prevents malaria by suppressing

reproduction of thePlasmodium and also helps

prevent some of the fevers and pain associated

with malaria

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Quinine fluoresces under UV light

Raymond Fosberg in the

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Raymond Fosberg in the

field in 1948

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Cinchona bark drying in the sun in

Ecuador, 1944

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Arrow Poisons

Documented use of arrow poisons

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Documented use of arrow poisons

around the world

Monkshood Aconitum ferox

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Monkshood Aconitum ferox

source of Acontine

Monkshood

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Monkshood

Aconitum ferox in the wild

Fi t Eth b t i l Ch i l

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First Ethnobotanical Chemical

Isolation - Strychine

1805 Leschenault describes the preparation ofthe Javanese dart poison Upas Tieute.

1809 Magendie and Delile publish accounts ofexperiments on mechanism of action of the

poison. 1819 Pelletier and Caventou isolate strychine

from other sources. Magendie uses strychine inclinical medicine.

1824 Pelletier and Caventou isolate strychinefrom upas tieute

1963 total synthesis of strychine by Woodwardet al.

Strychnos nux-vomica - source of

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Strychnos nux-vomica - source of

Strychine

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Strychnos nux-vomica

leaves and seeds

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Strychnos

Interestingly there are about 200 species in

the genus Strychnos but only 6 actually

contain strychine S. nux-vomica, S. ignatii(St. Ignatius bean), S. colubrina (snake

wood) and S. guianensis. Strychine is

commonly used in rat poison. It has beenused to stimulate circulation, but that cannot

be recommended because it frequently

poisons the patient.

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Curares

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Calabash curare from Strychnos

guianensis carried in gourd

Crescentia cujete source

of calabash gourd

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Tube Curares made from members of

Chondrodendron and other moonseeds -

Menispermaceae

Chondrodendron tomentosum leaves and vine

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Tube and Calabash Curares

The bamboo tube curare yielded

tubocurarine and the calabash gourd curare

yielded toxiferine - both are useful as ananaesthetic in open-heart surgery - these are

muscle relaxants which kill by relaxing

muscles which allow breathing

Bark being scraped to start

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Bark being scraped to start

preparation of curare

Liquid dripped through shavings to

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Liquid dripped through shavings to

extract Curare

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Curare added to arrow/dart tips

Waorani man

i i i f l i

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Toxicities of several arrow poisons

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Anti-tumor medicines from

Arrow Poisons? There is a possibility that plants producing arrow

poisons may also have value in producing anti-tumor medicines. Spjut and Perdue (1976)

surveyed 76 species from 63 genera in 29 familiesand found that 46 of the species had been screenedfor anti-tumor activity. Of these 52% of thespecies and 75% of the genera had been found tohave anti-tumor activity. This high anti-tumor

activity probably comes from the fact that arrowpoison plants almost all produce cardenolideglycosides that are cytotoxic (kill cells).

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Herbal Medicines Today

Though many modern cultures make extensive use

of herbal remedies, most notably in India and

China, much of Western medicine has moved

away from herbal medicines. In Great Britain

there is still a tradition of homeopathic doctors and

herbal Culpeper Shops. Homeopathy is based on

using minute quantities of substances that inmassive doses produce effects similar to those of

the disease being treated.

Nicholas Culpeper

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Nicholas Culpeper

1616-1654

C lpepers Infl ence on

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Culpepers Influence on

Homeopathy

Graves patent medicine a

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G p

Laudanum product

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Medicines from Plants

About 25% of the prescription drugs used in the

western world have active ingredients that are

derived from plants often the only way to

acquire these drugs is through growing and

harvesting the plants because synthetic substitutes

are not as effective.

89 plant derived drugs that are currently used inwestern medicine as prescription medicines were

discovered by studying folk knowledge of the

plants properties

Strychnos toxifera

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y f

source of D-tubocurarine

Mexican yam Dioscorea villosa

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y

Source of cortisone

Indian snakeroot Rauwolfia

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f

serpentina Source of resperine

Madagascar periwinkle Catharanthus

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g p

roseus Source of vincristine

White Hellebore Veratrum album

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Source of hypotensive alkaloids

Medicinal Plants in

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the Amazonian Basin

3 million square miles in size, supports theworlds largest rainforest with an estimated80,000 species of plants, about 15% of the

worlds species The northwest section of the Colombian

Amazon is home to 70,000 Indians in 50ethnic groups that speak many languagesfrom 12 linguistic families. They have beenrecorded to use in medicines almost 1600plants from 596 genera in 145 families

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Cannabis sativa and C. indica

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Cannabis sativa and C. indica

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Cannabis sativa x indica hybrid

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High tech Cannabis growing

in the Netherlands

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UK Police Bust of High-Tech Growth

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World Cannabis Laws