History and Development of Pharmacognosy

Definition: The branch of knowledge concerned with medicinal drugs obtained from plants or other natural sources.

History of pharmacognosy can be classified into three major stages.

First stage before eighteenth century, very few documents and recorded evidences are available showing use of natural products by human.

Second stage involves nineteenth century, which is the time when basic subject has evolved. In this century, the name pharmacognosy came into practice. Initially the subject was more likely to descriptive botany of medicinal plants. But as the time progress, it changes the course and encompasses extraction, isolation and other advances techniques. Third stage In twentieth century, which may be considered as third stage of development, series of discoveries resulted in complete metamorphosis of the subject. From last two decades, pharmacognosy is studied in more systematic manner. As herbal wave continue to sweep the world, importance of natural product is at the pinnacle. People are expecting natural products to fit in modern framework. As a result of this there are series of new herbal formulations in the market.

In India, information about drugs was documented in several Ayurvedic texts which still exist. Apart from Atharvaveda there are several books like CharakSamhita, SushrutSamhita,
AstangHridaya, MadhavNidan and BhavaPrakash.

In eighteenth century, pharmacognosy was much closely related to botany. In old days,
drugs from natural origin were used in crude form as powder or decoction. Later in nineteenth century, development in science has expanded arena of pharmacognosy. Now a day’s pharmacognosy has become a kind of multidisciplinary subject which embarrasses
phytochemistry, analytical pharmacognosy, pharmacotherapy, medicinal plant biotechnology, herbal formulations and nutraceuticals.