The term Pharmacognosy, coined about two hundred years ago, literally means knowledge of drugs. It is an interdisciplinary-science, which includes the study of all aspects of drugs obtained from natural sources. This discipline includes the history of drugs from nature, their commerce as well as their processing into modern day pharmaceuticals.
History of natural products in medicine: In his quest for survival, man sampled nature’s bounty by foraging for food and medicine. Organisms such as plants that were pleasant to the taste were used as food; those with unpleasant taste or effect were avoided, while the poisonous and venomous organisms were used against enemies; others that produced physiological effects such as healing, defecation, relief from pain, perspiration or hallucination were saved for medical purposes and divination. Thus by trial and error over a period of several millennia, humans learned the art of healing both the body and mind.
The traditional systems of medicine probably started over 5000 years ago. According to legend, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung put together Pen Tsao, an herbal compound, which included over 300 plant remedies. During that period in India, the indigenous medicine Ayurveda, which means the knowledge of life, was established; and starting at the same time and later, the Sumerians developed a system of cuneiform writing which helped them record prescriptions on clay tablets.
Traditional European medicine started back with the Egyptian and Babylonian-Assyrian medicine. Illness believed to be caused by bad spirits or a form of divine punishment, could be cured through exorcism and penance. The Egyptian ideology was recorded in Ebers Papyrus. It describes over 700 formulations with drugs derived from animal, mineral and plant sources, with plant drugs predominating.
The Egyptian and Assyrian culture was adopted by the Greeks and subsequently by the Romans. They derived their herbal knowledge from the civilizations referred earlier. Their contributions along with those before them are recorded by Dioscorides in De Materia Medica and in the 37-volume natural history written by Pliny the Elder. These early works are know to us through translations into Arabic by Razes and Avicenna and subsequently translated into Latin and the European languages by Christian monks. This knowledge was further nurtured and passed on to future generations by monks who studied medicinal plants and established medicinal plant gardens across Europe.
In the 9th century, apothecary shops opened in Bagdad (now Iraq) and by the 13th century London became the hub of trade in herbs and spices. Adulteration of herbs was common in this trade and establishment of proper standards and quality control was absent. In the 18th century, Linnaeus, a physician, introduced the binomial system of plant nomenclature, which helped authenticate and identify plants. This was followed by the publication of pharmacopeias across Europe and the United States. These compendia established and clearly defined the method of identification and standard of quality for each of the drugs from natural or synthetic sources.
Relatively recent trends to replace crude plant drugs with their biologically active compounds started in the 18th century with the pioneering work of Carl Scheele, who isolated organic acids from plants. This discovery was followed by several similar ones with Friedrich Serturner’s success in isolating morphine from opium and Pierre Pelletier and Joseph Caventou isolating quinine from the cinchona bark. These achievements initiated the field of phytochemistry. A recent study showed that among prescription drugs marketed between 1983 and 1994, 44% were either of natural origin or derived semi-synthetically from natural substances.
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