As agreed upon by specialists, the birth of the modern medicine starts with anatomy studies. The thorough studies of the human body uncovered what Hippocrates called “yellow, black and white fluid”. As veins, neurons, organ and lymph tissues described, their importance became even more comprehensible. (I am skipping a long term which follows.) It is again at those times, while surgery which uses mostly anatomy and internal medicine which uses and develops traditional methods polarized as two ways of the medicine. Surgeons and internists were always different from each other. Anatomy made this difference even more obvious within the developing period of medicine. In the present times, there are still two ways of medical solutions: either surgery or internal medicine.

After those descriptions, when chemistry adhered in medical applications at the beginning of the century, human life was able to be extended approximately 5-10 years. We all know that people take huge boxes of antibiotics. Even sometimes a doctor is not visited for simple illnesses; everyone seems to know the correct drugs for their illness. If you have fever, take an antipyretic or an antibiotic! Simple as that!

However, all those antibiotic consumption, results in the immunity of the bacteria against the drugs. So antibiotics has to be renewed with new components and chemical changes. Of course those renewal and development has a certain limit. The best example to this would be the patients who quit their tuberculosis therapies. In those patients, the classical antibiotic therapies would not work and the number tuberculosis cases around the world increases.

In our times, there are still certain failures and non-curable illnesses that classical therapies cannot cope with. So, presently people tend to recall their past knowledge for their physical and spiritual health that information is being more popular and is under investigation in details.

After this long preface, I would like to introduce you one of those past knowledge: Phythotherapy.

When we take the literal meaning of Phythotherapy, it means “medication with plants.”

If we take a look at its description, application and history, we may easily recognize that it is a discipline already placed in medical studies. Most of the drugs we use today are derived from the plants. Digoxin, for example, known as its heart strengthening effects and widely used among patients who have heart failure, is an extract derived from the plant family called “digitalis”. Also, very well known Aspirin was obtained from the shell of a kind of willow tree at the beginning. Many toxic drugs used on cancer patients, primarily derived from fungi. Again, the Penicillin –which can be considered as the invention of the century- is obtained from the mould of a lemon. It is possible to extend those examples and many fundamental drugs were obtained in this way.

But at the beginning of this century, a devastating change was experienced as I mentioned earlier. This change was “industrial chemistry” enrolling into our lives.

Grained sugar, refined oil, crystallized salt and of course chemical drugs were able to be produced industrially. Contemporarily, aromatic salts, synthetic sweeteners, industrially-made soups are added to the range. (Do you realize that those foods mentioned are not natural and healthy, but only taste good?)

Consequently, chemical drugs are an enormous industry in our time. And although this industry is under heavy critics, it surely makes sense at the point where it makes our lifes easier.

The health-related part of this industry is its addictive and habitual use among doctors and pharmacists. During their education, every doctor and pharmacist is taught about the main ingredient, obtaining ways and necessary mixture amounts of the drugs. But this is pretty hard and complex information. So, it is difficult, unrealistic (in supplying) and ineffective to use digitalis plant when a patient suffers from heart failure. Instead of this, the use of digoxin is common and preferred, as it much more accustomed, easy to supply and cheap.

In the absence of chemical industry, it used to take a well educated doctor (in this issue), again a very well educated pharmacist and agricultural gatherer to be able to cure a patient. Today, I cannot cure any my patients with that old method. But the therapies we advise using the drugs works.

The real problem we face is when the illness does not reply to a drug therapy, and the therapies which are not effective enough. (Not to mention very expensive drugs whose prices are nearly at the income level of a casual citizen)?

If we put its economic part aside, the most important issue is “the ingredients” of the chemical drugs. Naturally derived drugs have two major effects which present chemical drugs cannot perform.

The first one is, those natural drugs contain effective substances that have ability to cure the illness in different doses and impure forms. Which means, it contains other effective substances in different quantities? The second one is, natural drugs contain those effective substances in their natural forms.

A molecule in space may be present in different forms due to its atoms. In chemical drugs, this feature is lost. And by production of materials that does not normally exist in nature, a characteristic which was not present before came into the picture.

Unnatural products are entering our biology. Organisms meet with those chemicals daily. They are said to be produced after long and careful investigations, but none of us question it. We just seem to except it as it is. So at this point, Phythotherapy is worth to remember and it worth to be recalled.