Introduction to plant extracts

We all know that in the history of human civilization, for most of the past 200 years or so, humans have been relying on traditional medicines to fight diseases. Almost all ancient civilizations and peoples with a certain degree of civilization have their own national medical system, of which the traditional Chinese medicine system is the most complete and has the greatest achievements. It can be said that China's TCM system is the highest performance of ancient medical science.

Introduction to plant extracts

    Advances in science and technology have created chemical drugs and new biological drugs. After the Second World War, the entire pharmaceutical industry has made considerable progress from research technology, production technology to professional management technology. At the same time, plant medicine, which has been in a relatively stagnant state for a long time, has also made new developments along with the advancement of science and technology and management. So far, the development of plant preparations has gone through three stages. The first stage is the traditional Dan, Wan, Gao and Sang. In the second stage, the hydroalcoholic or alcohol-water extraction crude treatment technology is combined with modern industrial preparation technology to make Chinese patent medicine. The third stage is to refine and quantify modern plant drugs using modern separation and detection techniques. The three stages of plant drugs only show the chronological order of their appearance, and it does not mean that the latter stage will replace or cancel the previous one. Just as chemical medicines cannot completely replace natural medicines, biological medicines cannot completely replace chemical medicines. But the latter reflects or uses modern science and technology more than the former.

    Plant extracts and modern plant medicine overlap in the concept of connotation, including parts of each other. Modern plant medicine is largely based on extracts. Plant extracts are the main raw materials and components of modern plant medicines, and some plant extracts are directly used in medicines. Currently, there is no uniform definition of plant medicine in the world. But in the West, plant medicines are called natural medicines. Natural medicines refer to all medicines that have not been chemically treated, come from nature, and are used to treat diseases.

    German modern plant medicine refers to the plant extracts used in treatment. It can be a whole plant extract or part of an extract, usually a compound chemical substance. Since 1976, Germany has defined plant medicine as medicine. This definition has been adopted by the American Botany Society.

    The plant drug product defined by the European Community is not only a single medicinal plant, but also a compatibility of multiple plant drugs, containing specific active ingredients or plant extracts. Phytopharmaceuticals are medicinal products in which plants are used for medical purposes. Botanicals and their products are considered to be a kind of medicines with unclear active ingredients or curative effects. Phytopharmaceutical preparations are pulverizing plants into powder, extracts, pigments, oils or liquids, squeezing and rolling plant juices, processing plants, purifying or concentrating plants, and separating single compounds or mixtures from plants. At this time, it is no longer regarded as a botanical medicine, but as a chemical medicine, such as atropine.

    Obviously, the above-mentioned botanical medicine, that is, western medicine, is different from traditional Chinese medicine in the definition scope. The difference between the two can be seen from the comparison in the table below.

    Ginkgo biloba is a typical representative of modern plant medicine, and it is also the earliest modern plant medicine, which is widely used worldwide. It marked the beginning of modern plant medicine. Compared with traditional Chinese medicines and proprietary Chinese medicines, modern botanicals represented by ginkgo biloba have the following characteristics:

    1) Know at least one or a class of active ingredients, although they may not be more important. Traditional botanicals and proprietary Chinese medicines are often only concerned with efficacy, and do not care or know the effective ingredients.

    2) The detection index is clear and quantitative. Even if the effective ingredients cannot be quantified, at least the ingredients on the label should be quantified. However, most traditional botanicals and proprietary Chinese medicines have not established quantitative methods, or only have rough quantitative methods.

    3) Using modern industrial separation technology, the effective ingredients are concentrated to a certain high content, which is the technological hub of modern botanicals.

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