Man and medicinal plants: a short review

The association of humans with plants obviously originated with the beginning of life on earth when plants provided the oxygen, food, forage, shelter, and medicine needed for higher life forms. Overtime and with the beginning of societies, humans learned to recognize and categorize plant materials suited for use in meeting the necessities of life. Of these necessities, the use of plants and plant extracts for healing can be traced to the earliest of myths, traditions, and writings used to codify those plant materials that could ease pain and treat diseases. The evolution of these plant-based medicine systems, primarily created by using plants within a local area, produced the well known traditional medicine systems, the Ayurvedic and Unani of the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese and Tibetan in other parts of Asia, the Native American of North America, the Amazonian of South America, and several local systems within Africa. While conventional medicine has become common in Western nations, approximately 70-80% of the primary health care throughout the world remains based on plant materials.