ABSTRACT
Numerous herbal products have reasonably well-documented medicinal activity. In fact, many herbal products have multiple therapeutic effects, which shouldn’t surprise us-as we’ve learned, a variety of chemicals are present in any plant. Unfortunately, relatively few plants have been investigated in great detail. In this chapter we will look at several plants whose biological activity is fairly well understood. Some will likely be familiar, and others are not exactly the type of herbs you would plant in your garden or read about in the supermarket checkout aisle. I’ve tried to choose examples which are diverse in their uses and actions and which illustrate the principles and concepts we have seen in earlier sections. In particular, I want to emphasize the connections between molecular structure and the action of a molecule, so that I leave you with a sense of how one determines the other. At the same time, I want you to have an appreciation of how complex the action of a medicinal plant can be, and to avoid the reductionistic tendencies so dominant in scientific analysis of medicinal plants.
