Plants, plant parts and plant
products and produce of all descriptions, particularly those with medicinal
properties, are invariably used as principal components or ingredients of
various traditional medicines. The number of plants with medicinal properties
include in the material medica of traditional medicine in the South East Asian
subcontinent at present stands at about 2000 (R.N. Chopra et al. 1958, Indigenous Drugs of India). More than 500 of such
medicinal plants have so far been enlisted as growing in Bangladesh (M. Yusuf et al, 1994, Medicinal Plants of
Bangladesh). This number of the indigenous medicinal plants is in the increase
with the discovery and introduction of newer plants every day. In the
traditional systems at the present time almost every plant and herb growing in
Bangladesh has ascribed to it some medicinal virtue and is used as either
principal therapeutic agent or as necessary associate (excipient) in medicinal
preparations to increase the potency of the principal ingredients. Although uses
of some of these plants are based on individual experience or isolated cases of
their beneficial effects. This is how the number of medicinal plants have
multiplied without sufficient scientific or clinical proof of their therapeutic
properties. At the same time it is also true that, while the employment of a
large number of the currently used medicinal plants would appear to have been
based on empirical evidence handed down from generation to generation, many of
these plants have been recommended as efficacious drugs after being clinically
tried by the practising physicians.
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| Medicinal Plants |
However, due to the introduction
of a large number of plants into traditional medicine based on only empirical
evidence, many of these so-called medicinal plants are now found to be
therapeutically useless. In this regard blurs have been created in the field of
traditional medicine vide these introductions. Their continued use in
traditional medicine is now justified by arbitrarily calling them as necessary
associates (excipients) of the active ingredients. Of course, inability to
correctly identify the recommended medicinal plants on the part of their
present day users may also be responsible for so many listed medicinal plants
turning out to be medicinally inactive.
Establishment of correct identity
of the medicinal plants used in traditional medicines is a serious problem,
because they are too many in number and too varied in character and the process
of identification is long, tedious and laborious. In addition to these, there
are other difficulties which have to be surmounted. No standard methods of
identification and proper scientific descriptions of the recommended medicinal
plants have been recorded in the older publications. Many of the plants
mentioned in the old records baffle and defy proper recognition and
identification as the descriptions recorded in them are so scanty and vague
that one cannot be certain from these descriptions whether the specimens used
currently are the particular plants recommended earlier.
Moreover, in many cases medicinal
plants are often referred to by using only their local or native names with
incomplete or unscientific descriptions. This results in a great deal of
confusion. Many vegetable drugs are sold in the market under various names and
different drugs under the same name. It so happens sometimes that entirely
different herbs are sold in different parts of a country under exactly the same
name and a particular plant is known by different names in different parts of
the same country.
This predicament of
identification of medicinal plants has further been aggravated by the lack of
trained manpower and absence of proper facilities in the traditional medicine
manufacturing firms. These firms mainly depend for the supply of their crude
drugs on ordinary, sometimes illiterate, drug dealers in the market who do not
have any formal training or education for identification of the medicinal
plants they collect or supply. They identify these plants in the natural
habitats or commercial consignments by organoleptic means entirely relying on
their past experience and familiarity with most of the medicinal plants used in
traditional medicines. This method of identification is not always reliable, because
there are many plants with different identities which look alike in their apparent
morphological characters. This is particularly true in cases of closely related
plants. Another issue with these unskilled collectors of plants is in their
selection of the specific plant parts. As is well knows each plant has specific
areas where its medicinal properties are potent. These collectors often collect
the wrongly identified parts of the genuine plant or the same part of a wrongly
identified similar plant. Thus, there exist much room for mislabelled crude
drugs. In fact, the majority of the vegetable drugs available in the local
market of Bangladesh or supplied to the manufacturers by the dealers are
invariably either heavily adulterated or entirely replaced by cheap and
worthless substitutes, either deliberately or un-deliberately.
Furthermore, it has been seen
that the problem of mislabelled plants or plant parts does not end with the
plant collectors or dealers. Many manufacturers of traditional medicines, even
when equipped with the right medicinal plants, out of ignorance, use the wrong
parts of these medicinal plants when preparing medicines. Thereby, the
therapeutic quality of the preparation is reduced or becomes completely useless
for the specific indications. These shortcomings on the part of the collectors
and suppliers and manufacturers of traditional medicines and lack of proper
expertise and facilities seriously affect the quality and potency of the
finished product.
Reference: The Medicinal Plants of Bangladesh by Abdul Ghani. ISBN: 984-512-348-1
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