Plants and Herbs as Agents Against Other Diseases

PLANTS AND HERBS AS AGENTS AGAINST OTHER DISEASES 

As previously indicated, in the foreword to Hartwell s compendium (1982b), James Duke, an authority on medicinal plants and plant compounds, had noted that government-supported research on plants as anticancer agents was inexplicably stopped on October 2, 1981, with whatever direction of research pursued to be left 

To continue the enumeration of various reference citations, consider the following partial listing A Dictionary of Natural Products Anticancer Agents from Natural Products Dictionary of Natural Products Phytochemicals Mechanisms of Action Nutrition and Cancer Phytopharmaceuticals in Cancer Chemoprevention Plants That Fight Cancer, etc. It is a sign of changing times and attitudes. The Dictionary of Natural Products has a listing of some 190,000 substances, is available on CD-ROM, and is updated biennially. 

To put the medicinal use of plants in perspective, although the native shamans are able to cure some fevers, for the most part they are not able to cure their own, very serious tropical diseases, for example, malaria and bilharziasis or schistosomiasis, and instead must rely on Western medicine. One may of course conclude that the best course of action is not to get sick in the first place. 

It may be mentioned in passing that comfrey was cited as a folkloric herb with curative powers but it is not mentioned that toxic PAs are a component (e.g., in Hoffman, 1999, pp. 76,90). As for alkaloids, among the anticancer agents mentioned are the Vinca alkaloids used successfully against childhood leukania, and the alkaloids scopolamine and hyoscyamine that occur in the mandrake root (and in other plants, such as henbane). 

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