I’m looking for examples of medical drugs derived from plants that were part of traditional medicine or herbalist lore. That is, at least one traditional herbalist used a certain plant or extract of one to treat a set of symptoms. Then later, someone else extracted some substance (possibly with modification) from that plant to find an effective treatment for a disease that causes those symptoms.
Here are the drugs/plants on my list so far. Note that the medical use listed is the one that is in common between traditional and modern medical use. The drugs may also be used for other things in modern medicine and some herbalists may have used them for other things where they didn’t really help.
Opiates/opium poppies. Medical use: pain relief, sleep aid. In use since prehistory; cultivated since 3400 B.C (first by the Sumerians). (see note at end of article)
Quinine/cinchona tree. Medical use: malaria. Originally used by indigenous South Americans for symptoms of malaria or perhaps just similar to malaria. There are several legends of how Europeans got to know about it and how it was introduced to Europe which are recounted here.
Artemisinin/sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua). Medical use: malaria. History of this is also discussed in the link above.
Metformin/goat’s rue (Galega officinalis). Medical use: diabetes. A history of its use can be found here.
Atropine/belladonna (Atropa bella-donna). Medical use: anaesthetic (no longer used for this in modern medicine). Also found in several other nightshade plants (henbane, mandrake, datura and others) which were also used in traditional medicine. Belladonna is the one they first extracted atropine from. Here’s a nice video describing its history.
Digoxin/foxglove (Digitalis lanata). Medical use: dropsy/congestive heart failure. There’s a video (by the same guy as above) about its history here.
Aspirin/willow bark. Medical use: reduce fevers. According to History of aspirin - Wikipedia it was not used as a painkiller in traditional medicine. Anyway, there’s another video by the same guy here.
Note: Other psychoactives (marijuana, psilocybin, cocaine) may or may not qualify. They all are or have been used in medicine (although not necessarily officially), but I haven’t looked into their herbal history because I’m not that interested in them. I’m more interested in non-psychoactive drugs. Discuss them if you want.
Aloe vera has been used to treat burns since time immemorial. I’m to understand that these days it’s used not only in OTC lotions and such, but in pharmaceuticals intended to treat inflammation and even cancer.
What’s your definition of a disease? Scurvy is due to vitamin C deficiency, and hundreds of years ago people found that citrus fruits and tea made from pine needles treated it.
Otzi the iceman was found with birch polypore, which has uses as an antibiotic, anti-parasitic and anti-inflammatory.
And how solid do you need the modern medicine to be? Epimedium was called “barrenwort”, meaning it was a medicinal herb used to treat barrenness. Extracts of it are sold today as “herbal Viagra”. Another common name for the plant was “horny goat weed”.
It’s since been supplanted by an even better drug, artemisinin, which came from a comprehensive study of hundreds of traditional Chinese medicines.
What proponents of traditional medicine usually leave out is that, out of those hundreds of medicines studied, it was the only one that turned out to be any good.
EDIT: Wait, I somehow overlooked that this was already mentioned in the OP. What’s a good treatment for selective blindness?
Oil of cloves (active ingredient eugenol) has been used for relief of toothache and other dental problems; I believe it’s still used in dentistry as a topical local anaesthetic (for example used on a cotton bud to numb the site for an injection of more powerful local anaesthetics).
Thymol (from thyme) is still used in expectorant cough mixtures and for other pharmacological uses.
A forgotten and valuable chapter in the history of tobacco concerns its role as a botanical medicine. For three hundred years following its importation into Europe, tobacco came to be considered a universal remedy highly prescribed by physicians. In the early history of tobacco, the literature on its medicinal benefits was voluminous.
Mints used to be offered to assist digestion. Mintec (and other brands) are peppermint oil capsules used tor the same purpose. Universally non-prescription, I would guess.
By the way, I have at my side my 1914 British Pharmacopoeia, if anybody needs me to look something up.
Hmm - interesting topic. Madagascar periwinkle is the source of the vinca alkaloids, used in certain cancer therapies.
Madagascar periwinkle, and other Catharanthus species, are used in both Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine as treatments for diabetes, hypertension and leukaemia.
Do you mean “was cancer treatment part of it’s traditional medicinal usage”?
Leukemia is a cancer. I would be dubious about how well it (the herbal medicine) worked in practice, though. Having said that, Vincristine (one of the derivatives, SmPC, click on Clinical Particulars) is used to treat leukemia. It’s a bit late over here to follow up that lead right now.
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ETA - the link to Kew describe trad use in broad generalization
ETA 2 - another link which talks about the herbal use indications, which include cancer. They’re skeptical.
Yes, because that seems unlikely. I’m sure mint tea was used for sore throats in traditional medicine. Many of the others were used for something related to their current use. And that seems to be the request of the OP, not just, “modern medicine decided from a plant”.
I suppose for most of its history, cannabis has been used by humans strictly to get high, or for religious purposes (viz, get high but do it for a religious reason). I’m going to assume that many of those early humans also got the munchies, and so at some point used it to treat poor appetite.
Today a pharmaceutical cannabis derivative, marinol, is used to treat poor appetite.
I’ve always enjoyed the irony of alt med enthusiasts boasting that X% of modern drugs were originally derived from plants, while simultaneously claiming that modern medicine ignores natural remedies because they can’t be patented.