THE INTERCONNECTION BETWEEN TRADITIONAL MEDICINE AND PHARMACOGNOSY CONTENT EXPLORING THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO DISCIPLINES THROUGH PLANT BASED HEALING PRACTICES

Аннотация

This article highlights the global significance of traditional plant-based medicines, emphasizing their longstanding use in various cultural and medicinal systems such as AYUSH, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and Islamic medicine. It explores how traditional healers have historically used various plant parts in different formulations to treat illnesses and how this knowledge has been passed down through generations. Despite the existence of around 30,000 medicinal plants used globally, only a small percentage have been scientifically studied for their bioactivity. The article explains the process of drug development from plant sources, including extraction, isolation, characterization, and structural elucidation of bioactive compounds. It underscores the integration of modern analytical techniques like NMR, mass spectrometry, chromatography, and bioassays with ethnobotanical knowledge to validate and standardize traditional remedies. The collaboration between botanists, ethnobotanists, pharmacologists, chemists, and biotechnologists is considered essential for developing safe and effective plant-derived drugs. The article concludes that although drug development from plants is time-consuming and costly, it remains a reliable and authentic approach to discovering new medicines based on centuries-old traditional knowledge.