Herbarium Apuleius (480–1050), one of the most copied manuscripts with uses of over 100 herbs, and the Leech Book of Bald are some of the Herbals of ‘Leech’ craft—the collective English word for medical practitioners. Some of the earliest herbals known are listed below:
Medical schools known as Bimaristan began to appear from the 9th century in the medieval Islamic world among Persians and Arabs and they were generally more advanced than those in medieval Europe at the time. As a trading culture, the Arab travellers had access to medical knowledge and plant material from distant places such as…
In early medieval Europe, monasteries tended to become local centres of medical knowledge, and their herb gardens provided the raw materials for simple treatment of common disorders. Herbalists used to wander and provide herbal remedies to the sick and needy. Particularly well-known herbalists of medieval Europe were the so-called wise-women, who prescribed herbal remedies often…
The earliest source of Greek medical knowledge is Homer. Two epic poems attributed to him, belonging to 8th century BC, mention treatment of injuries of wounded warriors. De Historia Plantarum and De Causis Plantarum by Theophrastus (340 BC) and Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica (78 AD) with several recipes same as the Ebers Papyrus contain approximately 80% plant medicines, 10% mineral- and 10% animal-derived drugs.…
The first Chinese herbal book, the Shennong Ben Cao Jing, compiled during the Han Dynasty but dating back to a much earlier period, possibly 2700 BC, lists 365 medicinal plants and their uses. Succeeding generations augmented on the Shennong Ben Cao Jing, as in the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs), a 7th century Tang Dynasty…
India has a very strong tradition of use of natural materials as drugs. The oldest written records of an even ancient oral tradition, namely the Vedas, mention the virtues of several hundreds of herbs. Many herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda since centuries earlier were later described in written form by ancient herbalists such as…
The use of natural materials for healing is possibly as old as mankind with the oldest evidence dating back to the Neanderthal era (70,000 BC) found in Shanidar Cave of Iraq. People on all continents have used hundreds of indigenous plants for treatment of ailments since prehistoric times. This knowledge could have arisen out of…
Pharmacognosy is the study of drugs derived from natural sources namely of plant, animal or mineral origin. Also defined as the study of crude drugs, pharmacognosy according to the American Society of Pharmacognosy is ‘the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of drugs, drug substances or potential drugs of natural origin as…
When ATP donates a phosphate group, it is converted to a group with low energy, forming phosphoric esters of alcohols. This reaction is catalysed by kinases. Among them is hexokinase, which catalyses the transfer of phosphate group from ATP to D-glucose. This reaction is proceeded by an orthophosphate cleavage of ATP, in which, ATP loses…
The processes that feed ~P into ATP/ADP cycle fall mainly within four groups: