Materia medica

Materia medica is a Latinmedicalterm for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeuticproperties of any substance used for healing, what we would call a drug. The term was used from the period of the Roman Empireuntil the twentieth century, but has now been generally replaced in medical education contexts by pharmacology. In Latin the term literally means "medical matters". One of the most well-known early uses of the term was as the title of a work by the Greekpharmaco-botanist Dioscoridesin the first century A.D., entitled de materia medica libri quinque (concerning medical matter in five volumes). This famous commentary covered about 600 plant drugs plus a number of therapeutically useful animal and mineral products.

History and Materia Medica of herbs

Therapeutic use of plants and plant products precedes recorded history and seems to occur in all indigenous and preliterate cultures. We have no record of the original concepts of how these substances were thought to work. When we have explanations from ancient Western or Asian civilizations, or obtained from members of primitive cultures, the proposed explanations can often be charaterized as magical-- invoking mechanisms or relationships not recognized by scienceas natural phenomena.

For example, folk healersamong European peasantrybelieved that some of the visible characteristics of plants provided clues to humans about the specific therapeutic value of each plant-- a concept known as the law of signatures.

In the early twentieth century, the body of knowledge termed materia medica was transformed by the methods and knowledge of medicinal chemistryinto the scienceof pharmacology.

Homeopathy

The term materia medica is still used in homeopathy. Minute dosages of materia medica are used in its lower potency medicines, and in herbal therapy. Homeopathy still considers there to be an inverse relationship between the presence of physical substance and the strength or action of the remedy. The higher potencies are those which have been potentisedbeyond the last moleculeand are believed to act and effect a cure on a metaphysicallevel. For more information see Homeopathic Materia Medica

External links

• Homeopathy Materia Medica- Extensive information about homeopathic materia medica with online books on materia medica.

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It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materia+medica Wikipedia article Materia medica.