Importance of Plants in Ancient Indian Medicinal System

Abstract

In India, medicinal plants played vital role in history of ancient health care sector. Traditional systems of therapeutics were used for providing health care to huge fragment of inhabitants, particularly in unindustrialized nations. Indian society refers medicinal plants as “the quintessence of Ayurvedic treatments and Ayurveda”. The basic principles of Ayurveda are usage of medicinal plants, sensibly with a suitable period of time for the treatment of diseases which had eventually shown phenomenal effects. The

roles of medicinal plants are not confined to cure the specific disease; same plant may have different primary and secondary metabolites that may therapeutically resolve several other issues related to the human health. Because of being multiple disease drugs, Indian medicinal plants are also stated as “elixirs of life”. A comprehensive awareness about the natural food, spices, and medicinal plants have been provided in this review which helps to figure out their impending influence completely. In ancient medicinal system, different parts of plants like leaves, stems, roots and rhizomes etc. are used as a drug for instance Ocimum sanctum Linn (tulsi), Zingiberofficinale(ginger), Allium sativum(garlic),Azadirachtaindica(neem) and many more. Various medicinal plants and their parts with therapeutic properties have been discussed along with their pharmacological mechanism of action that were used in the history of ancient Indian medicinal system and also the future perspective of convention to use same plants in field of Research and Development, manufacturing of Drug and effect of globalization on Ayurveda and Unani