1. Medicinal Plants

2. Ancient archaeological records of medicinal plants 3500 BCE - India had an extensive pharmacopoeia. Much of that knowledge is still used as part of the Ayurveda medical system 2250 BCE – Egypt and Babylon were trading medicinal plants 900 BCE - Archaeological records demonstrate the use of medicinal and psychoactive plants in the New World 330 BCE - One of the Theophrastus’s students, Alexander the Great, sent medicinal plants from Asia back to Greece for cultivation 2000 YA - The first written Chinese records although use is probably as ancient as India’s

3. Use of Medicinal Plants Use of medicinal plants developed from informal experimentation and based on a general familiarity with medicinal plants. This knowledge was amassed via experimentation over many generations and was handed down orally from person to person – often woman to woman in traditional cultures.

4. Theophrastus 370-285 BCE

5. History of Herbals Dioscorides, in the 1st Century AD, was a Greek physician who described the medicinal properties of plants - he described the use of 500 species of plants in his book De Materia Medica The first herbal written in the Anglo-Saxon world was an 11th Century book known as the Herbarium of Apuleius Platonicus The first herbal to break from Dioscorides and print descriptions of local flora, with accurate drawings of the plants was by Leonhart Fuchs, his extremely well illustrated herbal De Historia Stirpium was published in 1543

6. Page from “Vienna Dioscorides” Arabic – 6 th Century

7. Page from Arabic edition of Dioscorides herbal 1334

8. Title page from Fuchs herbal –1543

9. Page from Fuchs Herbal 1543 Papaver or Poppy

10. More from Fuchs Herbal 1543 Nicotiana - Tobacco

11. English Herbals The earliest printed English herbal was anonymous volume from 1525 published by Richard Banckes In 1526, Peter Treversi published an English translation of a French herbal In 1538, William Turner published an herbal entitled Libelluls de re Herbaria Novus In 1551, Henry F. Lyte published an English translation of Rembert Dodoen’s herbal Stirpium Historiae Pemptades Sex which was valued because of its all inclusive treatment of many plants and excellent plates illustrating flowers

12. Best English Herbals In 1597, John Gerard published his outstanding book The Herball, Or Generall Historie of Plantes - it is a huge volume of 1392 pages and 2200 woodcut illustrations of plants - it was widely used by physicians and became widely quoted and referenced - the book has remained in print for 400 years The last major herbal published in English was John Ray’s herbal, published in 1688 - it is also a major taxonomic work and Ray was the first person to divide the flowering plants into two main groups - the dicots and monocots

13. Cover of Gerard’s Herbal – 1597

14. Page from Gerard’s Herbal - 1597

15. Title Page of John Ray’s Herbal - 1688

16. Page from John Ray’s Herbal - 1688

17. Ginseng root – Panax pseudoginseng

18. Foxglove – Digitalis purpurea Foxglove may be useful as a way to cure people of “grosse and slimie flegme and naughtie humors” – from Gerard’s Herbal - 1597

19. William Withering - holding a foxglove

20. Withering’s work on Foxglove Began experiments with foxglove in 1775 - Withering had heard about an old family cure for dropsy Reported his findings in a paper published in 1785, “An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses” Powdered foxglove leaf is still prescribed in tablets or capsules to treat congestive heart failure The somewhat crude powdered drug is called Digitalis after the plant Foxglove produces more than 30 different cardiac glycosides - two in particular - Digoxin and Digitoxin are produced from foxglove and prescribed to heart patients around the world today

21. Foxglove - Digitalis purpurea

22. Willow Bark – inspiration for Aspirin

23. Urgent need to study medicinal plants The utility of plants in current therapy There has been a rush to develop synthetic medicines based on plant medicines, but often the synthetic medicines don’t work as well as the original plant medicines. For example – quinine and malaria

24. Efficacy of Quinine Quinine is traditional and effective preventative of malaria Synthetic preventatives such as chloroquine, maloprim, and fansidar have largely replaced the use of quinine Many strains of Plasmodium have developed resistances to the synthetics and the synthetics are more toxic. It is recommended that people do not take fansidar for more than 3 months due to potential liver damage.

25. Malaria Cycle

26. Anopheles freeborni mosquito – intermediate host and vector for Plasmodium sp.

27. Historical distribution of Malaria

28. Red areas show countries with malaria today

29. One of the sources of Quinine – Cinchona succirubra

30. Cinchona pubescens

31. Timeline of Quinine Use 1633, a Jesuit priest named Father Calancha described how to use quinine bark to cure fevers 1645 Father Bartolome Tafur took some bark to Rome and many of the clergy used it Cardinal John de Lugo wrote a pamphlet to be distributed with the bark - use of the bark became so widespread that in the papal conclave of 1655 no one died of malaria 1654 – English aware of use of quinine bark 1735, a French botanist named Joseph de Jussieu journeyed to South America and found and described the tree that is the source of the bark - he sent samples to Sweden where in 1739, Carl Linneaus named the tree genus Cinchona

32. Timeline of Quinine Use 20 to 40 species of Cinchona - the species are very hard to tell apart and the species will hybridize, so the exact number of species is unknown – mostly understorey trees 1820 the French chemists Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Caventou isolated the alkaloid quinine from the bark and identified it was the active ingredient in Peruvian bark 1861, an Australian named Charles Ledger obtained seeds from an Aymara Indian named Manuel Incra by 1930, the Dutch orchards in Java produced 22 million pounds of quinine, 97% of the world’s market

33. Charles Ledger – 1818-1906

34. Chemical structure of quinine

35. Properties of Quinine Quinine itself is an odorless white powder with an extremely bitter taste It can be used to treat cardiac arrhythmias as well as malaria - it is also used as a flavoring agent Quinine prevents malaria by suppressing reproduction of the Plasmodium protozoan and also helps prevent some of the fevers and pain associated with malaria

36. Quinine fluoresces under UV light

37. Raymond Fosberg in the field in 1948

38. Cinchona bark drying in the sun in Ecuador, 1944

39. Arrow Poisons

40. Documented use of arrow poisons around the world

41. Monkshood – Aconitum ferox – source of Acontine

42. Monkshood – Aconitum ferox in the wild

43. Uses of Aconitum In Europe the plant has been used as a liniment or tincture in the treatment of neuralgia, sciatica, and rheumatism, and taken internally to alleviate fevers. In India and China the plant is still used in treatment. In the raw state, tubers are applied to the skin as a surface anaesthetic and to treat lumbar and leg pains, neuralgia and rheumatoid arthritis. After much processing it is used for cardiotonic and diuretic properties. Acontine is an alkaloid derived from monkshood - used in heart medicines, common cough medicines, and used in fly control in Europe since 1240

44. First Ethnobotanical Chemical Isolation - Strychine 1805 – Leschenault describes the preparation of the Javanese dart poison Upas Tieute. 1809 – Magendie and Delile publish accounts of experiments on mechanism of action of the poison. 1819 – Pelletier and Caventou isolate strychine from other sources. Magendie uses strychine in clinical medicine. 1824 – Pelletier and Caventou isolate strychine from upas tieute 1963 – total synthesis of strychine by Woodward et al.

45. Strychnos nux-vomica - source of Strychine

46. Strychnos nux-vomica leaves and seeds

47. Strychnos Interestingly there are about 200 species in the genus Strychnos but only 6 actually contain strychine – in particular S. nux- vomica, S. ignatii (St. Ignatius’ bean), S. colubrina (snake wood) and S. guianensis. Strychine is commonly used in rat poison. It has been used to stimulate circulation, but that cannot be recommended because it frequently poisons the patient.

48. Curares

49. Calabash curare from Strychnos guianensis – carried in gourd Crescentia cujete – source of calabash gourd

50. Tube Curares – made from members of Chondrodendron and other moonseeds - Menispermaceae Chondrodendron tomentosum leaves and vine

51. Tube and Calabash Curares The bamboo tube curare yielded tubocurarine and the calabash gourd curare yielded toxiferine - both are useful as an anaesthetic in open-heart surgery - these are muscle relaxants which kill by relaxing muscles which allow breathing

52. Bark being scraped to start preparation of curare

53. Liquid dripped through shavings to extract Curare

54. Curare added to arrow/dart tips Waorani man

55. Toxicities of several arrow poisons

56. Anti-tumor medicines from Arrow Poisons? There is a possibility that plants producing arrow poisons may also have value in producing anti- tumor medicines. Spjut and Perdue (1976) surveyed 76 species from 63 genera in 29 families and found that 46 of the species had been screened for anti-tumor activity. Of these 52% of the species and 75% of the genera had been found to have anti-tumor activity. This high anti-tumor activity probably comes from the fact that arrow poison plants almost all produce cardenolide glycosides that are cytotoxic (kill cells).

57. Herbal Medicines Today Though many modern cultures make extensive use of herbal remedies, most notably in India and China, much of Western medicine has moved away from herbal medicines. In Great Britain there is still a tradition of homeopathic doctors and herbal Culpeper Shops. Homeopathy is based on using minute quantities of substances that in massive doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated.

58. Nicholas Culpeper 1616-1654

59. Culpeper’s Influence on Homeopathy

60. Grave’s patent medicine – a Laudanum product

61. Medicines from Plants About 25% of the prescription drugs used in the western world have active ingredients that are derived from plants – often the only way to acquire these drugs is through growing and harvesting the plants because synthetic substitutes are not as effective. 89 plant derived drugs that are currently used in western medicine as prescription medicines were discovered by studying folk knowledge of the plant’s properties

62. Strychnos toxifera – source of D-tubocurarine

63. Mexican yam – Dioscorea villosa Source of cortisone

64. Indian snakeroot – Rauwolfia serpentina –Source of reserpine

65. Madagascar periwinkle Catharanthus roseus –Source of vincristine

66. White Hellebore – Veratrum album Source of hypotensive alkaloids

67. Medicinal Plants in the Amazonian Basin 3 million square miles in size, supports the world’s largest rainforest with an estimated 80,000 species of plants, about 15% of the world’s species The northwest section of the Colombian Amazon is home to 70,000 Indians in 50 ethnic groups that speak many languages from 12 linguistic families. They have been recorded to use medicines made from almost 1600 plants from 596 genera in 145 families

68. Cannabis sativa and C. indica

71. Cannabis sativa x indica hybrid

72. High tech Cannabis growing in the Netherlands

73. UK Police Bust of High-Tech Growth

75. World Cannabis Laws - 2011