Carry extensive group of plants which are used for receiving the raw materials applied in traditional or traditional medicine to prevention or treatment of various diseases to medicinal.
The history of use of herbs consigns to the distant past of mankind. The most ancient document confirming this fact is the Sumer clay tablet dated in the III millennium B.C. On it 15 recipes of drugs with use of such plants as mustard, a thyme, a fir, a pine, a willow, etc. are provided. The Ancient Chinese medicine knew more than 1500 officinal herbs and koreniye. Still in the traditional culture of China actively use in the medical purposes a ginseng, garlic, onions, ginger, cinnamon, a cornel and other plants.
With the advent of doctors and druggists as special estate, knowledge of herbs was generalized and systematized. In Avicenna's work "A canon of medical science" written presumably in 1023 about 900 plants with detailed recommendations about application are described.
In modern classification of herbs allocate three groups. Official herbs which are recognized as raw materials for production of medications at the state level belong to the first group. The second group consists of pharmacopoeian plants. These also officially recognized medicinal raw materials which standards are stated in State Pharmacopoeias – the collection of the documents regulating quality of medicinal raw materials. To the third, the widest, group the herbs and roots used in traditional medicine belong.
Vegetable raw materials can be used in a fresh and dried look. Carry underground bodies to types of vegetable medicinal raw materials: roots, rhizomes, tubers and bulbs. From elevated bodies of plants in medicine apply a grass, escapes, leaves, flowers, kidneys, buds, bark, seeds, fruits and berries. Underground bodies of plants, as a rule, prepare in the early spring or in the fall. Herbs and escapes usually have the most expressed curative properties in a blossoming phase. From herbs produce various medicines for internal and external application. Various tinctures, broths and extracts are widely used. From fruits, juicy tubers and berries sometimes receive juice. Rather seldom in medicine powder of the dried-up herbs is used. As external application apply grass bathtubs, wrappings, compresses, lotions and various ointments to treatment of any given diseases.