Origins of Plant Derived Medicines

This review article describes the origins of plant derived medicines that have been developed as a result of traditional knowledge being handed down from one generation to the next. Various industries are now searching into sources of alternative, more natural and environmentally friendly antimicrobials, antibiotics, diabetics, antioxidants and crop protection agents. Medicinal plants have provided a good source of a wide variety of compounds, such as phenolic compounds, nitrogen compounds, vitamins, terpenoids and some other secondary metabolites, which are rich in valuable bioactivities, e.g., antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antimutagenic, anti-carcinogenic, antibacterial, or antiviral activities. Medicinal plants have become the main object of chemists, biochemist, and pharmaceutics. Their research plays an important role for discovering and developing new drugs that hopefully have more effectiveness and no side actions like most modern drugs.