Özet:

Abstract For centuries, medicinal plants were the most important remedies and represented the largest part of the materia medica. With the development of synthetic substances for medical therapy from the 19th century on, many medicinal plants fell into oblivion. During the last decades, however, the interest of physicians of scientists has turned again to medicinal plants, especially as in spite of modern chemical substances, many sicknesses cannot be treated satisfactory or be cured. At the same time severe side effects are often limiting factors in the therapy. The knowledge and experience of generations about the uses of medicinal plants is laid down in an abundance of historical sources from different cultural origin merging into a rich fundus which waits to be explored. The tradition in Europe is built by the antique Greek authors, followed by Byzantine scholars and medieval Arabian and European scientists. This tradition was continued by the famous authors of the renaissance herbals, authors from different European regions including the Ottoman scholars, finally leading to the academic discipline of modern Pharmacognosy. At the same time, medicinal plants which were given up by the academic sciences, survived in the folkloric medicine of many regions. Analyzing the historical sources and isolating persistent traditions in the applications over the centuries, and assigning the results to modern scientific knowledge offers us the unique chance to do targeted investigations and discover or rediscover medicinal plants or even their active substance as potential new (phyto)therapeutics and finally suggest them for further laboratory research. We will give a survey over the historical sources, and explain the methods of investigation by various examples

Anahtar Kelimeler: