The section provides basic facts about the benefits of natural herbal ingredients - medicinal plants. About 108 species that we use in medical practice and have, in our opinion, relevance for phytotherapy.
These medicinal plants are predominantly wild plants, borrowed from the native flora, long tested by Russian folk medicine and quite widespread in the conditions in which the majority of the population of the USSR.
All medicinal plants have a botanical description (excluding commonly known ones), flowering and fruit ripening times, distribution and locations, parts of the plant used, time when medicinal plants are harvested, smell and taste of plant material, and a list of chemicals found in the plant.
Flowering medicinal plants are collected during flowering, coinciding approximately with the time of maximum accumulation of nectar, which contains dextrins, acids, essential oils, nitrogenous and mineral compounds along with sugar. Flower pollen (carried away on the bee's legs and transformed by them into perga) contains protein, fat, vitamins, mineral salts. Nectar and flower pollen are used by the bee for nourishment. The medicinal properties of honey are well known. Therefore, in the characterization of plants indicated for phytotherapy, indications of nectar-bearing and perganic plants are given.
The characterization ends with a chapter: information about medicinal plants, their pharmacological properties and the use of plants in scientific and folk medicine.
In covering the experience of folk medicine, the author used the domestic literature available to the author and literature of a number of foreign countries - Bulgaria, Poland, GDR, France, Austria, India and others.In the folk medicine of which phytotherapy was predominant.
Medicinal plants have a biological characterization compiled by the staff of the Botanical Institute named after V. Л. Komarov, collected interesting data on plants included in the pharmacopoeias of different countries of the world, which the author used in the present work.
The data on the use of medicinal plants in folk medicine are, as we have seen, not only of historical interest.
In scientific medicine, all therapeutic drugs are pre-tested experimentally on animals and clinically.
Earlier, for lack of clinics, the therapeutic effect of plants people tried on themselves and their loved ones. In addition, for the treatment of animals, man used such plants as wormwood, firkin, yarrow, mint, turnip, chamomile, veleriana, mallow, oak bark, juniper berries, flaxseed, parsley seeds, anise, dill, caraway, aira root, gentian, wheatgrass and others. Medicinal plants, most of them were also used to treat humans, often for similar ailments.
So in veterinary practice quite often used wormwood bitter in the form of gruel or decoction for weak digestion of animals and worms. In folk medicine, the same wormwood is also used for loss of appetite and as an anthelmintic. If now there are cases of using observations on animals to find plants with necessary properties for medicine, it can be assumed that some of the mentioned plants with their healing properties were originally borrowed by man from animals.
Zemstvo veterinarians made extensive use of medicinal plants as an additive to feed. Consequently, many medicinal plants have been tested by man to some extent and experimentally.
Data on recipes and plant species used in phytotherapy have useful information on medicinal plants and their nutritional uses, as discussed by a number of authors.
Based on our objectives, we do not provide systematized data on pharmaceutical preparations obtained by extracting isolated active ingredients from plants. There is a specialized literature on this issue.
Basic information about medicinal plants does not exhaust all data about them. Additional facts and descriptions of the growing area are needed when medicinal plants need to be collected. Proper collection of medicinal plants should be guided by the botanical atlas, reference books for procurers of medicinal plants, as well as the requirements of GOST, State Pharmacopoeia and approved technical conditions for the acceptance of plant medicinal raw materials. Collection of medicinal plants should take place far away from highways, working industrial plants and so on.
Information about medicinal plants in medicine cannot be used for self-medication. All plants should be used for treatment only as prescribed and supervised by a physician.
In describing the action and use of the 108 medicinal plants we use in the book, not all species have recommendations from the author..
