Abstract: Herbal medicine or phytomedicine refers to the use of plants and herbs for the purpose of cure and mitigation of human ailments. Plants have been used for medicinal purposes by humans since long before recorded history. Although modern medicine has taken over the lead from herbal medicines in the treatment of diseases in humans, the use of herbals has increased in recent years worldwide, as they are believed to be safer than modern medicines with few or no side effects. The potential of herbal medicine in health care has been established by various phytochemical and pharmacological studies. Herbal drugs are commonly administered as an extract of the whole herb, as herbal tea or fresh juice. Many times, the whole herb is consumed either fresh or in the dried and powdered form. The efficacy of a drug can be significantly affected by the method of drug delivery. The slowness in the efficacy of a treatment suggests a growing need for a specialty approach to the delivery of drugs to specific targets in the body. Hence an efficient drug delivery system that can deliver an optimum amount of drug to the site of action has to be developed for herbal medicine to make a successful bid in the treatment of various human ailments.
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 26
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