History

The phytothérapie, which uses plants to fight against the diseases, is one of the most former therapeutic methods: the first treaty of phytothérapie is Chinese. All the companies, antique or modern, have a medicine of plants.

The Egyptian, for example, used the bark of pomegranate tree against the parasites. We even found numerous receipts written in hieroglyphs on papyri, as that of Ebers, dating 1700 BC. But it is the invention of the printing office that allowed the reproduction of the medical treaties assessing spices used by the apothecaries.

In the XVIIth century appeared, in Europe at least, the cinchona, and at the end of the XVIIIth century the digitalis. In the middle of the XIXth century, we became aware of insecticidal properties of the pyrèthre, and it is only at the beginning of our century when we introduced the hawthorn into the pharmacopoeia. Rauwolfia began to be turned to good account only at about the 1950s, the pervenche small towards the same time, and works continue at present, for example on Ochrosia, Apocynacées with interesting anticancerous properties.

The phytothérapie takes advantage of all the elements of plants: roots and rhizomes, collected during the period of dormance, before the resumption of the vegetation; the bark of trunks and branches, taken from trees or shrubs; sheets and collected stalks, as flowers, at the time of the bloom. Fruits and bays are harvested in maturity. We can also collect substances (eraser, resins) on vegetables in place.

In the preparations, the composition of a remedy can gather various plants. The herb tea, the cataplasm applied directly to the skin, the syrup, the alcoholic or aqueous solutions, the essences and the oil are the most common forms of remedies. For phytothérapeutes, it is often the set of the plant which establishes the live principle: to separate its components means decreasing his efficiency. Numerous said pharmaceutical medicines allopathiques are extracted, originally, from plants. For example, the salicylic acid, the live principle of the aspirin, was made with the bark of willow. He is synthetized at the moment by chemical way, what allows to control better the quality, but also to save willows to meet the world consumption.

If the preparations for base of plants are not quite really active, certain have soothing properties, laxatives or diuretic well established. The phytothérapie is perfectly indicated in the minor illnesses but, given that certain plants contain powerful live principles, it is formally disadvised to practise the automedication in this domain.

Continuation of the glossary