Early European Records of Medicinal Plants of India: a valuable resource for drug discovery

Feb 13, 2009, IISc, Bangalore

Speaker: Annamma Spudich


Abstract

Medicines derived from plants were the primary source of healthcare before the advent of modern pharmaceutical chemistry. Even today much of the world's population relies on botanical medicines as their first line of defense against illness or as supplements to single molecule drugs. It is estimated that 50% of the single molecule drugs used in modern medicine are derived from plant sources, either directly derived from botanicals or chemically synthesized based on active bio-molecules from plants. The discovery of many of these single molecule drugs was based on age-old botanical medical knowledge of traditional societies, India among them. While the classical texts of Indian traditional medicines are now the focus of extensive study, the powerful folk medical knowledge of India has been less accessible for systematic study. Some of the lesser-known sources of folk medical knowledge of India are available in European books published in the 16th and 17th Centuries. This talk will introduce these sources.