Herbs and other plants in medicine

Before modern medicines, all anyone had were those made from natural plants and from animal parts. Angiosperms (flowering plants) were the original source of most plant medicines. Modern medicine, does, however, make use of many plant-derived compounds as the basis for evidence-tested pharmaceutical drugs, and phytotherapy works to apply modern standards of effectiveness testing to herbs and medicines that are derived from natural sources. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care.

I live in an area of the country where the traditions include the use of herbal medicines. Native American medicine combines herbs, spirituality, and magic.



It is known that many plants have natural chemicals which are capable of healing. There are 180 different species of wild plants in the Rio Grande region which have medicinal properties used by one of the Pueblo Indian tribes; Zuni Pueblo Indians used fourteen different plant species in the treatment of stomach ache alone.