30-08-2017, 10:34 AM
Pharmacognosy is the study of drugs derived from plants or other natural sources. The American Society for Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of drugs, medicinal substances or potential drugs or naturally occurring drug substances, as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources ". It is also defined as the study of raw medicines.
The ancient Egyptian polymath Imhotep is believed by James Henry Breasted to have extracted the medicine from the plants. The word "pharmacognosy" derives, however, from two Greek words φάρμακον pharmakon (drug), and γνῶσις gnosis (knowledge). The term "pharmacognosy" was first used by the Austrian physician Schmidt in 1811 and 1815 by Crr. Anotheus Seydler in a work entitled Analecta Pharmacognostica.
Originally, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, pharmacognosy was used to define the branch of medicine or commodity sciences (Warenkunde, in German), which deals with drugs in their raw or unprepared form. Raw medicines are dry, unprepared material of vegetable, animal or mineral origin, used for medicine. The study of these materials under the name of pharmakognosie was first developed in the German-speaking areas of Europe, while other linguistic areas often use the older term medical material taken from the works of Galen and Dioscorides. In German the term drogenkunde ("crude drug science") is also used synonymously.
At the end of the 20th century, the subject had developed mainly in the botanical aspect, particularly in the description and identification of drugs both in its state and in the form of powder. These branches of pharmacognosy remain of fundamental importance, particularly for the identification of pharmacopoeia and quality control, but the rapid development in other areas has greatly expanded the subject. The advent of the 21st century brought a renaissance of pharmacognosy and its conventional botanical approach has been extended to the molecular and metabolomic level.
