Traditional medicine defined

Native to tropical America, sweet potato (I. batatas) is a perennial morning glory vine that has been cultivated for over 5,000 years for its edible tubers in Mexico, Central and lowland South America, and the West Indies. Today, sweet potato is cultivated around the world, especially in developing countries (Plate 4). A decoction made from the leaves of this plant is used in folk remedies as a gargle to treat mouth and throat tumors, and poultices are prepared for inflammatory tumors (64). In Mexico, leaf decoctions are considered to be of cold nature , to reduce excessive body heat, contemporarily defined as such illnesses as diarrhea, dysentery, heart disease, stomach distress, fever, and gastrointestinal infection. In Chinese traditional medicine, the tubers have been used as a medicinal herb to eliminate secretion in perceived abnormal quantities of blood or other body fluids (79). 

In the health sciences field, preventive medicine has traditionally been defined as the ensemble of actions and advice aimed specifically at preventing diseases " and promoting health, and the process for enabling individuals and communities to increase their control over the determining factors involved in health to improve itJ Besides health-restoring activities, there are also those that are fundamentally preventive such as immunization, health education for healthy people, and screenings. 

Considering that the Narcissus species are a rich source of alkaloids, it is not surprising that, despite their lethal potential, plants of this genus have been used throughout history in traditional medicine to treat a variety of medicinal problems (386). N. poeticus, for example, is described in the Bible as a well-established treatment for symptoms that would now be defined as cancer (387). In the fourth century BC, Hippocrates of Cos (the Father of Medicine ) recommended a pessary prepared from Narcissus oil (probably N. poeticus) for the management of uterine tumors (388). In the first century ad, Pliny the Elder also recorded the topical use of... 

Parallel processing of synthetic operations has been one of the cornerstones of medicinal and high-throughput synthesis for years. In the parallel synthesis of compound libraries, compounds are synthesized using ordered arrays of spatially separated reaction vessels adhering to the traditional one vessel/one compound philosophy. The defined location of the compound in the array provides the structure of the compound. A commonly used format for parallel synthesis is the 96-well microtiter plate, and today combinatorial libraries comprising hundreds to thousands of compounds can be synthesized by parallel synthesis, often in an automated fashion. 

A point that is often forgotten in westernized medicine is that of the approximate 7 billion people in the world at this moment, more than 80% of them do not have routine access to drugs as they are defined in Western medicine, but rely upon predominately plant-based therapies as their sources of medicinal agents. Even in areas of the world where single agent drugs are available, traditional therapeutic regimens such as Ayurveda in India, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Japanese and Korean herbals are still the major source of medicinals. 

Traditionally, one did a review of those studies writing a narrative about them and drawing conclusions based on the subjective evaluation of this information by the reviewer. A different way to write review articles, named meta-analysis, was introduced into clinical medicine by Chalmers. It has been defined as a systematic review of studies that uses quantitative statistical procedures to combine, synthesize, and integrate information across these studies . What this methodology does is take a group of... 

No single definition adequately captures the range of practices that fall under the CAM rubric. Those that define CAM as practices that are not part of mainstream medicine, or as practices used by patients to manage their own health care, or as therapies not widely taught in Western medical schools or available in most hospitals, fail to capture the complexity of this field. CAM includes health-care practices that range from the use of vitamins, herbal remedies, and massage therapies to the ancient traditions of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, along with chiropractic techniques, naturopathy homeopathic medicine, meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture, and a host of other less well-known approaches to health and health care. 

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