Farmacognozie specială

Medicinal plants are plant species, cultivated or spontaneous, which through their chemical composition have pharmaceutical properties and are used in human and veterinary therapeutics. Very few countries in the world can boast such a wealth of medicinal plants. Unfortunately, in our times, pharmacognosy and phytotherapy are not given due importance, although it is known that one out of five medicinal products is made using one or more plant products as raw material. Also, for many medicines it was sought, with the help of various chemical processes, to reproduce in the laboratory part of the active principles of the plants. Indeed, many times this has been achieved with more or less success. These, however, will never be able to fully reproduce all the active principles from the respective plants, as well as the percentages in which they are "mixed" in the plant product, and therefore will not have the same qualities as the plants from which they are made. Medicinal plants are the raw material for phytotherapy. Since the dawn of his existence, Man, at first from instinct, then from intuition and experience, and later through a scientific, rational approach, has used and continues to use, for the purpose of curing or ameliorating diseases, medicinal plants. The medicinal plants that grow in our country, in most of them, are little researched and even less utilized. Romanian pharmacognosy and phytotherapy still remain, for the most part, either folklore or based on studies and imported raw material, despite the great efforts undertaken by the few Romanian researchers (O. Bojor, M. Alexan, E. Giurgiu et al.) who have dedicated their research to these healing plants.