ABSTRACT
The past decade has witnessed a considerable enhancement of interest in the use of various traditional herbs and plant extracts in primary healthcare and conventional medicine. They form part of traditional medicine systems, and a vast body of anecdotal evidence exists supporting their use and efficiency. Some of these traditional medicines (especially in the Chinese system of medicine) have stood up well to modern clinical investigations, whereas the so-called miracle cure of others have been either disproved or not substantiated. There is evidently a lack of scientific data from well-planned clinical trials, and the situation is further complicated by the fact that the herbs are almost always used as complex polyherbal mixtures. Among the herbal drugs, one raw drug that has undergone considerable study is ginger. This is perhaps most widely used in the Indian system of medicine known as Ayurveda. Ginger is also a very important drug in both the Chinese and Japanese systems of medicine.
