Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 161

HERBAL MEDICINES There is a rich variety of herbal medicines worldwide. The written records of Ayurveda, just one of the ancient systems, contain more than 8,000 herbal recipes. Some date back some 5,000 years, but according to WHO the same recipes are used in India today by about half a million healers. |l7) A single local shrub can be put to very versatile uses. Neem, for instance, is a tree that grows all over the Indian sub-continent. The juice of fresh neem leaves with a little salt is used to treat thread worms and ascaris, and the ripe fruit can be decocted and used for urinary troubles. Neem is thought to have antiseptic properties and broken bones are bandaged with camphorated lint soaked in a neem decoction. Neem oil can be applied to skin to treat scabies. The sap is used for stomach troubles, the bark for sores, and tender Neem leaves for dysentery. (l8) In a world increasingly dominated by Western cultural values, it is easy to forget just how much modern medicine owes to traditional medicine. The wealth of knowledge of medicinal plants built up over centuries in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been tapped by the modern drug industry as the basis for a number of key drugs. Digitalis (from foxglove) has been used for centuries to treat heart failure and still provides the raw materials for a number of modern heart drugs. The snake-root, rauwolfia serpentina, was sold in bazaars in India 3,000 years ago for snakebites and as a calmative. From the 1940s, reserpine was extracted from rauwolfia serpentina and is still used to treat high blood pressure. Curare, from wourali root, was first used by South American indians as a paralysing arrow poison. One of its active alkaloids is now an important muscle relaxant in modern surgery. The Incas used cinchona bark to reduce fever. This is rich in quinine, one of the first modern antimalarials. Quinine remains important, particularly with the emergence of malaria strains resistant to more recent drugs, such as chloroquine. Quinine is also used for muscle cramp. In China the medicinal value of the ephedra plant has been known for over 5,000 years. Today the alkaloid ephedrine is used to treat asthma. As modern drug production got underway in Europe and America, some poorer nations were used as an important source of raw materials. An UNCTAD study describes the pattern of pharmaceutical trade established. "In conformity with colonial economic relationships of the time, British pharmaceutical manufacturers opened trading branches and agencies in India and kept India as a preserve for their finished products until the 1940s. British manufacturers and traders shipped out from India chemical raw materials (such as cinchona bark, nux vomica seeds, poppy pods etc) and shipped back to India extracts and other medical preparations for general prescriptions." (20) PLANT-BASED DRUG INDUSTRY Even today with advanced technology, it can still be cheaper to manufacture drugs from a plant extract, rather than synthesising them entirely from chemicals. The Third World continues to provide drug manufacturers with valuable raw materials. A number of hormonal contraceptives are made from di osgenin, an active 121