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Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. [1] The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical , and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin ...
In China, Japan, India, and Germany, there is a great deal of interest in and support for the search for new drugs from higher plants. [4] For example, the Herbalome Project was launched in China in 2008 and aims to use high throughput sequencing and toxicity testing to identify active components in traditional herbal remedies.
Many of these plants are used intentionally as psychoactive drugs, for medicinal, religious, and/or recreational purposes. Some have been used ritually as entheogens for millennia. [1] [2] The plants are listed according to the specific psychoactive chemical substances they contain; many contain multiple known psychoactive compounds.
There can be many years between promising laboratory work and the availability of an effective anti-cancer drug: Monroe Eliot Wall discovered anti-cancer properties in Camptotheca in 1958, but it was not until 1996 – after further research and rounds of clinical trials – that topotecan, a synthetic derivative of a chemical in the plant, was ...
Around the end of the 19th century, the mood of pharmacy turned against medicinal plants, as enzymes often modified the active ingredients when whole plants were dried, and alkaloids and glycosides purified from plant material started to be preferred. Drug discovery from plants continued to be important through the 20th century and into the ...
Crude drugs are drugs of plant, animal and microbial origin [clarification needed] that contain natural substances that have undergone only the processes of collection and drying. [ dubious – discuss ] The term natural substances refers to those substances found in nature that have not had man-made changes made in their molecular structure.
The alkaloids content in plants is usually within a few percent and is inhomogeneous over the plant tissues. Depending on the type of plants, the maximum concentration is observed in the leaves (for example, black henbane ), fruits or seeds ( Strychnine tree ), root ( Rauvolfia serpentina ) or bark ( cinchona ). [ 174 ]
Entheogenic drugs and the archaeological record; Hallucinogenic fish; List of plants used for smoking; List of psychoactive substances and precursor chemicals derived from genetically modified organisms; List of psychoactive substances derived from artificial fungi biotransformation; List of substances used in rituals; Medicinal fungi