Chapter 18 Toxicological aspects of herbal remedies

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the toxicological aspects of herbal remedies. Plants and herbs have been used since the earliest times to cure various ailments. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, about 80% of all medicines were derived from herbs. With the development of the modern pharmaceutical industry came the domination of chemically defined drugs, which in many cases were isolated or developed from natural sources, some examples being atropine, codeine, colchicine, digoxin, ephedrine, morphine, physostigmine, pilocarpine, quinine, quinidine, reserpine, strychnine, taxol, tubocurarine, vincristine, and vinblastine. The role of analytical toxicology in the field of pharmacology and toxicology of herbal remedies is of primary importance. Chromatographic methods have made it possible to identify some known natural compounds in unrelated species and have shed new light on their functions. Modern separation methods are frequently applied in the quality control of herbal remedies produced in industrial conditions. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) has been used for the analytical fingerprinting of herbal extracts.