A plant that is wild or cultivated, but used for medicinal purposes.
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, against parasites and herbivorous mammals.
The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opium are listed on clay tablets, c. 3000 BC. The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt, c. 1550 BC, describes over 850 plant medicines. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who worked in the Roman army, documented over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in De materia medica, c. 60 AD; this formed the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years. Drug research sometimes makes use of ethnobotany to search for pharmacologically active substances, and this approach has yielded hundreds of useful compounds. These include the common drugs aspirin, digoxin, quinine, and opium. The compounds found in plants are diverse, with most in four biochemical classes: alkaloids, glycosides, polyphenols, and terpenes. Few of these are scientifically confirmed as medicines or used in conventional medicine.
Medicinal plants are widely used as folk medicine in non-industrialized societies, mainly because they are readily available and cheaper than modern medicines. In many countries, there is little regulation of traditional medicine, but the World Health Organization coordinates a network to encourage safe and rational use. The botanical herbal market has been criticized for being poorly regulated and containing placebo and pseudoscience products with no scientific research to support their medical claims. Medicinal plants face both general threats, such as climate change and habitat destruction, and the specific threat of over-collection to meet market demand.
