Plants have been utilized as medicines for thousands ofyears (Samuelsson, 2004). These medicines initially took theform of crude drugs such as tinctures, teas, poultices, powders,and other herbal formulations (Balick and Cox, 1997;Samuelsson, 2004). The specific plants to be used and themethods of application for particular ailments were passeddown through oral history. Eventually information regardingmedicinal plants was recorded in herbals. In more recenthistory, the use of plants as medicines has involved theisolation of active compounds, beginning with the isolation ofmorphine from opium in the early 19th century (Kinghorn,2001; Samuelsson, 2004). Drug discovery from medicinalplants led to the isolation of early drugs such as cocaine,codeine, digitoxin, and quinine, in addition to morphine, ofwhich some are still in use (Newman et al., 2000; Butler, 2004;Samuelsson, 2004). Isolation and characterization of pharmacologically active compounds from medicinal plants continuetoday. More recently, drug discovery techniques have beenapplied to the standardization of herbal medicines, to elucidate
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