Fundamentals of Herbal Medicine

<p>This book consists of cutting-edge materials drawn from diverse authoritative sources which are sequentially arranged into a multipurpose one-stop-shop user-friendly text. It is divided into four parts as follows:<br />•    Part 1: Historical overview of some indigenous medical systems; an outline of the basic concepts of pharmacognosy ethnopharmacology; common analytical methods for isolating and characterising phytochemicals; and the different methods for evaluating the quality purity biological and pharmacological activities of plant extracts. <br />•    Part 2: Phytochemistry and mode of action of major plant metabolites.<br />•    Part 3: Systems-based phytotherapeutics; discusses how dysfunctioning of the main systems of the human body can be treated with herbal remedies.<br />•    Part 4: Provides 153 monographs of some medicinal plants commonly used around the world including 63 on African medicinal plants. <br /> <br />This book therefore demonstrates the scrupulous intellectual nature of herbalism depicting it as a scientific discipline in its own right.</p>