ABSTRACT
The interest in kava extracts in Western medicine began following its description by naturalist Johann George Forester. Forester, then 18 yr old, and his father Johann Reinhold Forester, served as naturalists aboard the H.M.S. Resolution during Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific from 1772 to 1775. Within 4mo of Cook’s return to England, the younger Forester’s description of kava and its medicinal effects were published and broadly circulated in the scientific community of Europe. These reports generated a significant number of scientific studies related to the pharmacological properties and chemical constituents of kava. The first extensive research into the active constituents was conducted by the French scientists Gobley (1860) and Cuzent (1861). By the early 1900s, pills, extracts, and tinctures derived from kava were widely available in Europe, and in 1914, it was included in the British Pharmacopoeia.
