History Of Pharmacognosy

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INTRODUCTION
1.1. Pharmacognosy
The detail study of mdicines originated from natural sources is described as Pharmacognosy. According to American Society of Pharmacognosy “Pharmacognosy is the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of drugs, drug substances or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources” (Tyler, 1999). As practised today, pharmacognosy includes the extensive study of natural products from plants, bacteria, fungi and marine organisms, botanical dietary supplements as well as herbal remedies (Cardellina, 2002). Pharmacognosy can also be defined as “the scientific and systematized study of physical, chemical, structural and biological features of crude drugs as well as their history, method of cultivation, collection and preparation for the commercial purposes”(Gokhele et al., 2008). It is the science which provides infrastructure for the evolution of novel medicines. It is a long-established pharmaceutical science which has played an alternative role in finding, characterization, standardization and manufacturing of plant material as well as phytomedicines regarding their macroscopic, microscopic and biochemical characteristics (Kaplan, 2001; Kinghorn, 2002; Gokhele et al., 2008).
Pharmacognosy is the scientific study of crude drugs originated from four different natural sources namely plants, animals, minerals and metals. It is estimated that 90% of the crude drugs are originated from plant sources while the remaining are from other three sources (Joy et al., 1998). Pharmacognostic study of crude drugs involves five customary parameters i.e. the botanical, organoleptic, physical, chemical, and pharmacological para...

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...e of a modern multidisciplinary discipline that could serve to arouse the interesting medicinal sciences. Increased interest in the study of natural products in drug development, as well as rapidly altering investigation strategies are the driving forces, modernizing the pharmacognosy. Pharmacognosy, now a day focuses on finding novel and unique molecules and revealing unknown targets by studying such molecules in nature. It is now well understood that pharmacognosy is one of several scientific disciplines that have an inimitable strategic position in connecting biology with chemistry and even medicine. New and improved strategies regarding the selection of organism selection, bioassays techniques, isolation procedures, and structure elucidation are constantly devoloped based on the latest advancements in pharmacognosy (Bruhn & Bohlin, 1997; Claeson & Bohlin, 1997).

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