Herbal remedies willow bark

In the 1800s, doctors, pharmacists, and scientists began to examine herbal remedies more closely. They began to identify the active ingredients in medicinal plants and to isolate and purify those substances. For example, the French pharmacist H. Leroux purified the drug salicin, the precursor of aspirin, from the bark of the willow tree in 1829. 

But among several success that deserve to be mentioned, one oft neglected is that several discoveries of herbal remedies in the Enlightenment perpetuated the above mentioned useful doctrine of simples developed by Thomas Sydenham. Notably, the Reverent Edmund Stone (1702-1768) announced that willow bark (containing aspirin) was a febrifuge (fever remedy). These simple factors or simples went under study for repeated purification and extraction. Purer extracts of simples and other prominent biological contents such as the molecules of albumin of eggs were to become the objects of scrutiny in the nineteenth century and the first medicinal chemistry, and the basis of molecular medicine in the midtwentieth century. 

It was not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that an analytical investigation of the active components of medicinal plants and herbal remedies was pursued. This resulted in the discovery of alkaloids such as atropine, morphine, codeine, and papaverine, which eventually became the major constituents of many modem analgesic and cardiac medicines. The discovery of aspirin (from Willow bark), the cannabinoids (from cannabis sct- ya), and digitalis (from foxglove leaf) also came many years, in some cases thousands of years, after these remedies were being used for pain relief, sedation, and dropsy (5-9). 

Many pharmaceutical products are derived from plants. A well-known example is digitahs, which is derived from the foxglove plant and is used in the treatment of heart conditions. Another example is morphine, which was originally extracted from poppies. Aspirin is derived from salicin, which is present in the bark and leaves of the willow tree. As herbal remedies have become more popular, the manufacture and sale of herbal products including combinations of herbs in tablet or extract forms has increased. Many products are readily available at health food stores and pharmacies. 

In the few pages available here, it s impossible to do justice to the modern pharmaceutical industry its social and economic importance cannot be overestimated. Until the mid-nineteenth century, most medicinal compounds were herbal remedies. Many of these traditional medicines were successful, and their descendants are still widely used. Aspirin, 24.1, is derived from salicylic acid (24.2) in willow bark (Latin, salix, willow tree), and willow bark preparations have been known to have analgesic effects since the Paleolithic. The narcotic effects of... 

---