Herbal medicine has gotten out of control. Herbs, once a third-world traditional method of healing, are hip again in the industrialized world, as humans try to stay well by resisting stress that is recurrent, and by resisting pollution, and try to cure illness by using medicine that acts synergistically with the body's defense system. The quiet revolution has been achieved. Millions already, in fact, turn to herbs such as ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba, p. 100) to keep mind and body in condition, and increasingly more people seek trained herbalists and naturopaths for recurring or chronic issues. And once more, evidence is accumulating in the form of scientific studies that support the efficacy of herbal medicines that are as good as conventional medicine without the side effects, or better yet, fewer or none at all. Pharmaceutical sales of products derived from botanicals grow year on year – up more than 50 percent in the US since 2000 – and conventional pharmaceutical firms now produce and sell botanical medicines.
Plant medicines
The range and sheer diversity of medicinally active plants is staggering. From 50,000 to 70,000 varieties of plants, from lichens to herbaceous trees, have been employed at some point or other for medicinal purposes. Western herbal medicine currently employs several hundreds of native European plants, and many hundreds of imports from the rest of the world. Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine) contains about more than 2,000 known plant species that have reported medicinal uses, while the more than 5,700 medicines included in the Chinese pharmacopoeia are largely plant preparation-based. There are about 500 herbs that are also used in orthodox medicine, but whole plants are used in minute quantities. Herbs are usually employed as raw materials for the isolation or chemical manufacture of traditional medicines. On the other hand, digoxin, used to treat heart failure, was extracted from house foxglove (Digitalis purpurea, p. 202) and the tablet was manufactured from wild yam components.
Ecological factors
All uses of medicinal herbs have environmental stakes. Herb cultivation is now carried out like an organic farm, placing a new expectation on the farmer, and even sometimes entire communities, mostly in developing countries. For example, in northeastern Brazil, plots of a communal farm grow medicinal herbs, which are sold to hospitals. Doctors in the hospital prescribe the medicine to patients. Greater use of herbal medicine threatens to completely wipe out the existence of some plants in their natural form. Demand for goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis, p. 105) is now so strong that it commands a price of about $140 per pound (or £170 per kilogram). Two hundred years ago, it was a ubiquitous tree growing in North American woods, but it is now an endangered plant whose survival in the wild is threatened by overharvesting. This is not an isolated event, and the same threat is faced by many species all over the world. Extinction due to over-intensive gathering of plants has also been a norm for some time. Silphion, of the carrot family, was used as a birth control drug by women in Roman times.
Silphion was a difficult plant to grow and was harvested in the wild in such great quantities that it became extinct sometime during the third century. As things stand today, if herbal medicine can be allowed to expand at the rate it has been expanding now, then producers, wholesalers, practitioners and consumers should only deal with product that has been ecologically grown or wildcrafted.
