History of natural medicines and pharmacopoeias

EVOLUTION OF THE "TODAY" CONCEPT OF "MEDICAMENT"

The Greeks were the first students of the natural sciences, together with the contemporary Arab civilization. The first pharmacognostists and students of natural medicines were the "rhizotomes" or root collectors; they were great Greek scholars who joined great personalities such as Homer, Hippocrates and Galen. They knew the natural sources and their properties, they were nomadic figures and not yet structured within a scientific culture like that of Hippocrates. It is then that Pharmacognosy originates as a discipline that tends to structure all the sources in the culture of natural medicine.

Figures like Hippocrates tried to combine the properties of a source with a particular pathology, so as to systematize and concretize the use of a plant product against a disease in a pragmatic way. This cataloging of natural sources was followed over the decades and has come to The historical period that plays a key role in the modern interpretation of medicine is the Middle Ages, according to many a period of obscurantism, but not for the Arab civilizations, which have collected the Greco-Roman heritage by transferring all their knowledge to the first libraries and universities. The first medical structures and those dedicated to the learning of medical culture were born in the Arab world; these structures were resumed in the Western world only in the Renaissance, when, with the discovery of the Americas, there was the need to understand these cultures and adapt them to that western.
At the beginning of the Renaissance the first PHARMACOPEAS were born: the manuals that list all the medicines, indicating: the method of use, the source according to the Linnaean binomial nomenclature, the part of the source with health properties and the treatment of the source so that it preserves the properties and the original quality. The pharmacopoeias contained the medical knowledge of that period; still today there is an official national pharmacopoeia, which reflects the traditions and discoveries of a society. The FUI (Official Italian Pharmacopoeia) is the one that counts most among the European pharmacopoeias. plant sources, just over a hundred; the FUE (European Official Pharmacopoeia) has fully married the Italian one. The pharmacopoeia is a tool for the drug specialist, which contains information aspects sufficient to meet the needs of various specialists, whether they are pharmacists and / or herbalists.
The Renaissance marks an essential turning point for the discovery of new medicines; the new world contains several rainforests such as the Amazon, which are still "today" an important source of natural sources. In this period the figure of the "apothecary" was born, he who knew all the vegetable sources, who increasingly distanced himself from the medical figure; distances that were necessarily established when the number of natural sources to be known increased significantly. The apothecary has evolved to today's figures of pharmacist, herbalist and promoter of well-being.
The explosion of knowledge about plant sources with health properties induced scholars to preserve them, so that the sources, local or imported from America and beyond, kept their health properties intact. The pharmacopoeias took on the appearance of botanical archives to maintain and pass on the knowledge of the sources, which were drawn in a very detailed way and recultivated in Europe in the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens were living catalogs for medicinal plants, which could thus be studied and employed.

Other articles on "History of natural medicines and pharmacopoeias"

1. Active ingredient and phytocomplex
2. Pharmacognosy
3. Plants imported from America

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