Medicinal Uses of Plants First

¶ … Medicinal Uses of Plants First the word, then the plant, lastly the knife. - Aesculapius of Thassaly, c. 1200 BC The epigram above suggests that humans have been using plants for their medicinal qualities since time immemorial. In fact, the pollen of eight medicinal plants was determined to have been intentionally deposited in a 60,000-year-old tomb in Iraq, and the shelves of the Assurbanipal library held tablets in cuneiform writing that listed more than 250 medicinal plants (Changeaux 1998).

Today, there has been a resurgence of interest in such medicinal plants as many people seek alternatives to the cures being touted by mainstream medicine. There has been some controversy, though, over the regulation and use of many of these plant materials, particularly in view of the lack of quality control and the wide variety of applications for which such plants are being used today.

Furthermore, there is much money at stake in the medicinal plant trade, and critics suggest that virtually none of the money being made from their collection and sale is going to the indigenous peoples who rely upon them as a primary source of medicines. In an effort to shed some light on this controversy and to determine whether medicinal plants are, in fact, efficacious, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature concerning medicinal plants to describe their history, traditional uses and their applications today.

A summary of the research and findings will be presented in the conclusion. Review and Discussion Background and Overview. Plants that are used for medicinal purposes, rather than for food, are commonly referred to as "herbs" or "medicinal herbs." There is physical evidence that the use of medicinal plant preparations dates back more than 60,000 years, and more than 25% of prescription medicines available today have been developed from such herbs (Freeman & Lawless 2001:388).

In fact, some observers suggest that modern medicine would be light-years ahead of where it is today if mainstream practitioners had taken the time to investigate the countless reports of the benefits of medicinal plants; for example, Sapu Changkija (2000) points out that, "Many renowned drugs of today would have gone into wider use decades ago if the folklore and traditions of tribal people concerning certain plants had been taken seriously" (205). Perhaps some of the reluctance to such traditional approaches can be related to the decidedly unscientific source of their effectiveness.

For instance, for hundreds of years, it was believed that each medicinal plant was a divine gift from God that also contained some type of "sign" that was intended to provide humankind with the benefits of the plant's healing effects. "This belief was referred to as the 'doctrine of signatures,'" Freeman and Lawlis note, and "Today, herbals are still used for their healing abilities, and herbal phytomedicine is the fastest growing alternative therapy in the United States" (2001:388).

Given this increased popularity, it is little wonder that there has been some misunderstanding about how and when such medicinal plant preparations should be used. Etiology, Applications and Common Medicinal Plants Today. The uses of medicinal plants have ranged through the entire spectrum of the physical and psychological maladies that can afflict the human race (Changeux 1998). Most known drugs today either mimic or enhance the action of those endogeneous chemical messengers that already present in the brain.

The various medicinal plant preparations that have emerged over the millennia have been patiently selected by generations of human beings not only for their medicinal usefulness but also for their "ineffable" and "mystical" actions on the human psyche (Changeux 1998:146). In many instances, these preparations have been and remain the only remedy available for remote populations of the world who do not have access to other medical resources (Davies 2001).

This isolation of use and preparation have presented contemporary healthcare practitioners with some significant challenges in terms of when and why medicinal plants have been used in the past. For instance, in their book, Trying to Give Ease, John K.

Crellin and Jane Philpott (1990) point out that there has been some confusion in the mainstream healthcare community concerning the efficacy of medicinal plants as the result of the introduction from time to time of new uses and regimens, as well as the same use for the same plant being described from a variety of viewpoints. "For example," they say, "a plant may be listed as a diuretic (function), a kidney cleanser (action), or a cure (e.g., for kidney stones).

In other words, functions, actions, and uses, all closely related, may be listed together as distinct entities" (10). Given the wide range of uses for which many medicinal plants have been applied, this is not surprising, but Crellin and Philpott caution that this diversity must be kept in mind whenever medicinal properties of plants are described by past or current practitioners. According to Zerner (2000), the majority of the knowledge about medicinal plants today has been accumulated based on empirical observations over long periods of time.

Likewise, Crellin and Philpott note that observations of the use of different plants by sick animals has always been a valuable source of information for early practitioners, and many continue to believe this is a valuable source of reliable information concerning the efficacy of medicinal plants today.

Even the nonmedicinal uses of these various plant materials has helped the body of knowledge through increased familiarity to the point where, "Nowadays, many herbalists believe that they have an almost intuitive sense of whether or not a plant is 'medical'" (Crellin & Philpott 11). Ten of the most popular medicinal plants today are bilberry, cranberry, echinacea, feverfew, Ginkgo biloba, goldenseal, kava, milk thistle, saw palmetto, and St. John's wort (Freeman & Lawlis 388). Current and Future Trends. According to C.

Lans' analysis, "Struggling over the Direction of Caribbean Medicinal Plant Research" (2003), "The renewed interest in medicinal plants was not only influenced by the paradigm shifting discourses; there was also the impression that there was money to be made" (474). For example, it was estimated that world sales of medicines derived from plants discovered by indigenous peoples in 1990 alone amounted to $43 billion, with virtually none of this amount being returned to the people who depend on them as a primary source of medicine (Lans 475).

Further exacerbating the problem for indigenous people who rely on medicinal plants as a primary source of medicines has been the fact that they are so popular. Because of their popularity in many traditional societies, some medicinal plants are in danger of extinction in the wild. For example, more than 400 plants with therapeutic properties have been identified in the Himalaya region, many of which are used in the traditional medicine of ethnic groups in the region.

In their essay, "Alpine Medicinal Plant Trade and Himalayan Mountain Livelihood Strategies," Olsen and Larsen (2003) point out that the trade in plant products from the Himalayas has assumed enormous proportions today. "Each year, tens of thousands of tons composed of hundreds of species and products are traded, the majority being collected from the wild and having medicinal or aromatic uses" (243).

According to Prasad, Rai, and Singh (2002), though, "The rural folk, who mostly live in poverty, collect and sell the medicinal plants in the local market or they work for licensed collectors to supply these plants to a bigger market. The incessant collection over the past many years has made some of these plants scarce in number and some species are on the verge of extinction" (295).

Unfortunately, unconstrained collection and deforestation of the rainforests are also seriously impacting the availability of medicinal plants around the world at a point when the mainstream scientific community is identifying an increasingly wide range of uses for them. For example, in his essay, "Edible Vaccines," Charles J. Arntzen (1997) reports that "Interdisciplinary research linking immunology and plant molecular biology has led to the creation of genetically engineered plants whose edible parts contain proteins that can function as oral vaccines...

Scientists may even be able to engineer plants to produce multiple proteins in a single tissue to deliver multicomponent vaccines" (190). Vaccines made from medicinal plant preparations designed for oral consumption would also simplify the vaccination process and would likely increase compliance rates as well.

In this regard, Arntzen suggests that these new technologies would be particularly useful in developing countries where safe, inexpensive, and readily available vaccines are desperately needed for universal childhood immunization programs; the author notes that although researchers have not yet identified the plant material that would best serve as the vehicle for an edible vaccine, much attention has been focused on the banana as the ideal plant for this purpose for a variety of reasons: bananas are grown in almost all tropical and subtropical developing countries throughout the world; they can be eaten uncooked (cooking would harm.