I need help!

[UFOvsUSO]

I need some information about the medicinal value of plants.Please help me,thanks.

[Neverfly]

Some can be medicinal... and tasty too.

Or did you want specifics?

[UFOvsUSO]

My teacher asked me to write an article about this but I even have no idea what I need ....

[Neverfly]

Well, before you can do any writing, you gotta do a lot of reading!;)

http://world.std.com/~krahe/html1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medicinal_plants

Herbal medicine is an ancient practice of determining what plants will treat which wounds, illnesses and infections.

Read up on the history of herbalism. Then start in on the nature of the process. After that you can look into which plants do what.

[UFOvsUSO]

Neverfly, thank you very much!

[JohnD]

Today, Herbalism is part of 'alternative' medicine and verges on the homeopathy/ crystal healing view. Pharmacy is the science of identifying, extracting and synthesizing drugs for medical use -pharmaceuticals - and pharmacists are the modern descendents of apothecaries, and herbalists. But beware - 'pharmacy' is also the word for a shop that sells such items and the 'net is full of 'pharmacies'. A search for 'history of...' , 'pharmacists' etc. may be more useful.

Some actual drugs whose history is interesting. Digoxin, a wonder drug is there ever was one, extracted from foxglove (Digitalis purpura). Aspirin, from willow - "salicylic acid" from Salix the botanical name for willow; Quinine (Cinchona vine), Morphine (poppy) and antibiotics which come mainly from fungi.

Good luck!

John

[grant hutchison]

Today, Herbalism is part of 'alternative' medicine and verges on the homeopathy/ crystal healing view.Yes. I'd supplement JohnD's choice of words by pointing out that herbalism "verges on" these other practices because many herbal preparations contain active ingredients, which can have demonstrable real effects. However, it's very rare to know how much, if any, active ingredient is present in any given herbal preparation.
It's interesting that people who fret about e-numbers and food additives are often quite happy to ingest unknown quantities of active substances (which may be poorly known or even unidentified), simply because they come in the form of "herbs".

Grant Hutchison

[antoniseb]

I moved this to from Astronomy Q&A to Off Topic Babbling.

[Infinity Watcher]

Another plant derived pharmaceuticals would be Vincristine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincristine) (an antileukaemic) The main point of this post however is to say that it might be worth coupling it with the other side of the coin: that whilst plants may have pharmaceutical effects they may not have just the pharmaceutical effects you want (c.f. St. John's Wort for depression and how digoxin has a horrendously small theraputic margin so is actually pretty risky to use outside of a carefully controlled series of dosages since it may well do either nothing or be pretty toxic and since different plants have different concentrations in: inherent risk)

[KaiYeves]

It differs. Many modern medicines do come, in part or completely, from plants, such as aloe and eucalypus.

[Nick Theodorakis]

The assignment is too vaguely described. It could mean anything from new-agey, woo-woo type talk about herbs and crystals and what-not, to "real" science and pharmacology.

If the latter, well, lots of plants have pharmaceutically-active compounds and many have been exploited commercially. These can range from relatively simple compounds such as salicylate (a derivative of which is aspirin), which originally came from willow tree bark, to fearsomely complex molecules that nearly defied total organic synthesis such as Taxol, which was first isolated from ... a shrubbery (the Pacific yew, or Taxus brevifolia, to be exact) and is used for chemotherapy against certain types of cancer (most notably ovarian) and is also being used to prevent coronary artery stent restenosis.

If you just have to pick one molecule and write about it, I suggest Taxol, because it is an interesting molecule with some interesting biological properties, along with a fascinating development history with some odd twists.

Nick

[Jens]

My recommendation would be another fascinating drug, atropine. It's used to dilate the pupils for eye tests, but also to raise the heart rate, so you may be able to hear it spoken of on TV programs like ER. It is kind of romantic because it is derived from a scary-sounding plant, the deadly nightshade. The plant is also called "belladonna", which means "beautiful lady" in Italian, because women used to put it in their eyes to make the pupils larger, which makes people look beautiful.

[Whirlpool]

My thesis back in college is about Herbal Medicines.

There are a lot of resources you can find not only here in the net.

If you are from my country , I can provide you some if you like.

[mugaliens]

I need some information about the medicinal value of plants.Please help me,thanks.

Which of the perhaps 35,000 potentially medicinal plants are we talking about, here?

Try wikipedia under herbalism.

[sarongsong]

Current research example:October 30, 2007
...chemicals in peppers may dull pain...Doctors are dripping the chemical that gives chili peppers their fire directly into open wounds during knee replacement and a few other highly painful operations...
San Diego Union Tribune (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071030/news_lz1n30read.html)

[Neverfly]

Current research example:

Capsiacin. main ingrediant in Icy Hot.

[mike alexander]

And Ambrose Bierce's contribution to herbal medicines...

BELLADONNA, n.
In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.