259

EDIT

OR

IAL

© 2009 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2009 Australian Veterinary Association

Australian Veterinary Journal

Volume 87, No 7, July 2009

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Pharmacognosy

A

lthough I have not yet read the book

Trick or Treatment?

reviewed by our esteemed colleague, Dr Trevor Faragher,

1

I would like to suggest some caution on rejecting herbalmedicine along with the others. Not only has herbal medicinecontributed so much to medicine in the past, but it may be calledupon to do so in the future.

Many herbs gave us foundation actives in some pharmaceuticalcategories eg. willow bark (

Salix

spp.) gave us aspirin, the firstnon-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, and analgesic; Quechuakuka (

Erythroxylum coca

) cocaine, the first of the local anaestheticseries; opium poppy (

Papaver somniferum

) morphine, the first narcoticanalgesic; Autumn saffron, (

Colchicum autumnale

) cochicine, thefirst gout remedy; foxglove (

Digitalis purpurea

) digitoxin, the firstcardiac glycoside; Indian poisons (

Strychnos

spp. and

Chondrodendrontomentosum

) gave us the first muscular relaxant curare; and variousfungi supplied the first antibiotics.

We can neither ignore the colossal benefit that synthetic chemicalmedicines are to human and veterinary medicine, nor ignore thebenefit we owe to pharmacognosy, especially as the multiplicity ofEuropean, Chinese, Aboriginal, African, Pacific Island and Amerindianherbs still await full scientific investigation.

We have become complacent with the phenomenal success of themanufacture of modern synthetic medicines by huge companieswith huge R&D budgets. This may not always be so.

Recently we have seen the wild scramble for remedial mergersto avoid economic collapse – nine companies merged into twopharmaceutical conglomerates. There is a worse threat, with aboutfive countries that have or are seeking nuclear weapons, with thecapacity to wipe out overseas centralised industrial complexes,such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, overnight.

We must encourage the accumulation of data banks, mostanecdotal, of herbal medicines.

Even so the huge industrial complexes have rarely been interestedin generating registration data on herbal medicines, because theycannot be mass produced and cannot be patented. For example,years ago I was approached by a small British company seeking tomarket a ginger tablet for car sickness in dogs. I considered thenightmare of trying to register it on anecdotal evidence and said‘no’. The irony is that Australia is one of the main producers ofginger, freely available for use in humans.

The AVA would be wise to tolerate the accumulation of anecdotalevidence as a first step towards full scientific investigation eventhough finance for such studies would be difficult to source.

1. Faragher T. Book Review and Commentary.

Aust Vet J

2009;87:119–120.

Kevin McManus

Ashfield, NSW

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-0813.2009.00455.x

Reference

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