Through education, there has developed a public awareness that our health is not being fully served by conventional medicine. A remarkable development in the field of traditional medicine has attracted phytochemists, biologists and agriculturists. The natural wealth of medicinal plants has become a target for the search by multinational drug industries and research institutes for new drugs. There are large number of traditional plants, their extracts and phytoconstituents presently used in modern medicine. There is a world-wide majority of population that still relies on plants as a source of medicine. The western society has become interested in natural products with the general public acquiring herbal formulations. There is an introduction of laws to control the sale, quality and efficacy of such products. The students studying medicinal plants, including phytochemists and pharmacologists, expect in-depth studies of the subject.
Nature has been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of year, and an impressive number of modern phytoconstituents of therapeutical importance has been isolated from the natural sources. The majority of the isolated plant compounds are terpenoids, flavonoids and alkaloids and their structures are varied extremely and often very complex. They show a wide reactivity range and exert different physiological properties.
The purpose of this book is to provide pharmacognostical information of drugs, their classification, adulteration, quality control and pest control. The presence of the natural products found in trace amounts are also mentioned.
The pharmacological activities of the important drug constituents are included. It is hoped that new entries would add immensely to the usefulness of the book by highlighting the results of chemical and biological studies of the herbal drugs.
The source book is organized into 25 chapters. Each chapter covers general information. The drugs include information concerning biological sources, geographical distribution, morphology, histological characters, chemical constituents, chemical tests, medicinal uses, adulteration or substituents and pharmacological activities. The chapters offer a view over the enormous diversity of natural chemical molecules. The stereostructures of phytoconstituents are illustrated to introduce most of the concepts required for the study of natural products.
Since the nomenclatures of many plants have undergone revision in the preceeding decades, the names of plants and their families have been updated as far possible to provide currently accepted names.
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