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Page 99 · DO #4909 · 231_Rogers_Bx8FF40_r
- Collection
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David James Rogers (1918–2007) papers
- Item/Folder
-
Rogers' Manuscript - "Plants & Men", 1971
- Digital Object
-
DO #4909,
page 99
- Collection-level dates
- 1948–1977
Page transcription
7 - 3
medicine. Frequent use of the spices for their aromatic essential oils is
practiced. Oil of wintergreen is very frequently used. Mint extracts also
add something to make it easier to take the active drug material. However,
one suspects strongly that many plant materials would not have been tried
for medicinal value had they had an innocuous taste when the various parts
were water-extracted. Certainly, if the plant product had a bitter taste,
it must be good for something that ailed you! And many of the valuable sub-
stances from plants, such as the alkaloids, a poorly defined class of sub-
stances from which we derive such valuable drugs as quinine, atropine, cocaine,
and morphine, are indeed bitter. Anyone who had been attacked by malaria be-
fore the days of the modern synthetics can attest to the extreme bitterness
of quinine.
The drug materials from plants fall into several general types of sub-
stances; among them the alkaloids, mentioned above; a group of enzyme-
inhibiting substances, such as the antibiotics, which either destroy the
disease-producing bacterium by preventing normal bacterial enzymatic activity,
or slow down the organisms output of some poisonous substance, thus allowing
the white cells to engulf the invaders; astringent substances, frequently
containing tannins, whose value is largely in superficial medicine (external);
laxatives, from such sources as the castor oil seed, whose nature is a com-
bination of oily substances with some alkaloids and some protein-like materials
that interact to cause rather violent action internally; vermifuges, contain-
ing alkaloids primarily, used particularly in those societies where there is
an acute lack of sanitation; and materials for anything from a toothache to in-
grown toe nails. Many times substances have been employed as aphrodisiacs --
substances that supposedly heighten sexual desire, but infrequently have these
materials proved effective (fortunately for this over-populated globe). Again
