Contributions of Natural Products to Healthcare

3 https://doi.org/10.26538/tjnpr/v2i2.1

Abstract

The importance of natural products for medicine and health has been enormous. Since our earliest ancestors chewed on certain herbs to
relieve pain, or wrapped leaves around wounds to improve healing, natural products have often been the sole means to treat diseases. The Ebers Papyrus (2900 B.C.) is an Egyptian pharmaceutical record, which documents over 700 plant-based drugs ranging from gargles, pills, infusions, to ointments. The Chinese Materia Medica (1100 B.C.) contains 52 prescriptions and documented records of the uses of natural products. The Greek physician, Dioscorides, (100 A.D.), recorded the collection, storage and the uses of medicinal herbs, whilst the Greek philosopher and natural scientist, Theophrastus (300 B.C.) dealt with medicinal herbs.1 During the middle ages the monasteries in England, Ireland, France and Germany preserved this knowledge whilst the Arabs preserved the GrecoRoman knowledge and expanded the uses of their own resources, together with Chinese and Indian herbs unfamiliar to the Greco-Roman world. It was the Arabs who were the first to privately own pharmacies (8th century) with Avicenna, a Persian pharmacist, physician, philosopher and poet, contributing much to the sciences of pharmacy and medicine.2