Natural Products, Medicinal Plants and Traditional Medicine

Pharmacognosy and Phytotherapy

Pharmacognosy is the science of biogenic or nature-derived pharmaceuticals and poisons that have been an established basic pharmaceutical science for over centuries. Although all pharmacognosy depends on plants and plant products some also depend upon various types of microbes and marine plants and organisms. Pharmacognosy includes a broad spectrum of biological subjects, including botany, ethnobotany, marine biology, microbiology, herbal medicine, chemistry, biotechnology, phytochemistry, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, clinical pharmacy, and pharmacy practice. The part of pharmacognosy which focuses on the use of crude extracts or semi-pure mixtures originating from nature is called as phytotherapy. It is the study of the scientific method and clinical use of herbal medicine.