Herbs and plants

Two general principles that the student should remember are (1) that all substances can under certain circumstances be toxic, and the chemicals in botanicals (herbs and plant extracts) are no different from chemicals in manufactured drugs except for the proportion of impurities and, (2) that all dietary supplements and all therapies promoted as health-enhancing should meet the same standards of efficacy and safety as conventional drugs and medical therapies. That is, there should be no artificial separation between scientific medicine and "alternative" or "complementary" medicine. 

Dclisle (op. cit., p. 357) also says that none of the hundred authors cited by Bartholomaeus is later than the commencement of the thirteenth century. In this book on herbs and plants in the 1506 Latin text the abbreviation Alia frequently used, and the name Alfredus is frequently used also, but the name Albertus docs not appear. This would seem to bear out the above statement of Rose and to explain the possibility of a misinterpretation of certain references to Alfredus as by Albertus, and this admitted, the reasons for placing Bartholomaeus ns later than Albertus disappear. 

Stary, F. (1996) The Natural Guide to Medicinal Herbs and Plants. New York, NY Barnes and Noble. 

Medicinal plants can offer alternative remedies with tremendous opportunities compared to synthetic modem pharmaceuticals. They not oidy provide access and affordable medicine to poor people they can also generate income, employment and foreign exchange for developing countries. Many traditional healing herbs and plant parts have been shown to have medicinal value, especially in the rural areas and these can be used to prevent, alleviate or cure several human diseases. The safety of raw medicinal plant materials clearly provides a compelling rational for both additional scientific study and national health care pohcies that can address the judicious use of traditional medicines to improve the quality and quantity of these materials and to ensure their efficacy. 

One of the oldest medicinal preparations made by man was alcohol. Here again careful observations provided the basis for the development of this ancient and important drug. Recipes for beer, wine, and mead are found in the oldest of recorded literature from cultures worldwide. Not only were these liquids used in ceremonial practices, their medicinal properties of decreasing pain sensation and the ability to induce sleep were greatly appreciated. As the cultures became more sophisticated these alcoholic beverages were used as tinctures of herbs to enhance the medicinal effectiveness of herbs and plants. 

Because SFE can provide much higher selectivity than conventional extraction methods, usually the SFE processes produce far less impurities coextracted with the active compounds. Pure active compounds can be easily isolated from the SFE produced herbal extracts using HPLC for medicinal studies. This green extraction technique provides an efficient way of obtaining active compounds from herbs with minimum waste production and appears attractive for manufacturing high quality herbal products and for isolation and identification of active natural products from herbs and plants in general. 

Those who do not obtain the Golden Elixir, and only ingest medicines of herbs and plants and practice the minor arts, can extend the number of one s years and defer the time of death, but cannot obtain immortality. 

If one ingests the Great Medicine of the Golden Elixir, the hundred evils do not come close even if one continues to dwell in the world. If one ingests only herbs and plants and small pills of the eight minerals, one can only heal from illnesses and increase one s length of life. This is because such preparations are not enough to avert the calamities that come from outside. (Baopuzi, 18.327)... 

Even the lowest of the minor elixirs is by far superior to the highest among herbs and plants. If any herb or plant is placed on a fire it burns away. Instead, if cinnabar is placed on a fire it produces quicksilver, and after repeated transmutations it reverts to cinnabar. It is by far superior to any herb or plant and therefore it can make one live long. Only the divine immortals see this principle. [Baopu zi, 4.72.)... 

For these reasons, according to Ge Hong, one could live several hundred years by ingesting herbs and plants, but if one neglects the Divine Elixirs, one will never be able to become an immortal. Nevertheless, confirming a pattern that has now become familiar, the Nine Elixirs suggests that one compound the Divine Tally Elixir and smear it on the soles of your feet. When you walk on the water, you will not sink. ... 

The common people are fond of wealth, and do not compound the alchemical Medicines. They believe in medicines obtained from herbs and plants, but these putrefy when buried, decompose when boiled, and burn when heated. If those medicines cannot keep themselves alive, how could they do so for humans They can heal illnesses and increase the pneuma (qi) but cannot make one escape death. Only a few can hear the essentials of the Culminant Way of the Reverted Elixirs. 

The determination of the metabolism profile of medicinal herbs and plant extracts is very difficult due to their inherent complexity. In the present work, a rapid analytical method using LC—MS" techniques for flavonol component screening in crude herbal extract and biosamples was established. Mass spectrometric fragmentation behavior and metabolic pathway complement each other in structural identification and correlating the metabolites and their parent forms. This information provides a basis for research that involves the metabolism profile of complex mixtures. 

Reif, K. and Metzger, W. 1995. Determination of aflatoxins in medicinal herbs and plant extracts. J. Chromatogr. A 692 131-136. 

Both natural and synthetic citral are composed of an isomeric mixture of geranial ( -3,7-dimethyl-2,6-octadienal) and neral (Z-3,7-dimethyl-2,6-octadienal). In the isomeric mixtures, geranial is usually the predominant isomer. It occurs naturally in essential oils of citrus fruits (i.e., up to 5% in lemon oil) and in a variety of herbs and plants such as Melissa officinalis, lemongrass (70-80%), and eucalyptus (Wichtel, 2002). Because of its intense lemon aroma and flavor, citral has been used extensively in the food, cosmetic, and detergent industries since the early 1900s (Boyer and Petersen, 1991). Studies in rats have shown that citral is rapidly metabolized to several acids and a biliary glucuronide and excreted, with urine (48-63%) as the major route of elimination of citral, followed by expired air (8-17%), and feces (7-16%). As demonstrated in Figure 8.8, seven urinary metabolites were isolated and identified 3-hydroxy-3,7-dimethyl-6-octenedioic acid. 

It is reasonable to suppose that small amounts of terpenes are absorbed and metabolized continuously in the body, since many of them are components of essential oils and of various herbs and plants used for medicinal or culinary purposes. These products no doubt contribute to a slight extent to the normal output of glucuronic acid, although no report was found in the literature that terpene derivatives or their glucuronosides are found in the normal urine. Those members of the group that are commonly used in pharmaceutical preparations have received considerable investigation and an increase in the urinary output of glucuronic acid has been found to occur almost invariably when these compounds are administered to experimental animals. 

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