Drugs and medication

Medications make the doctor’s job bit easier and it also eases the discomfort of the patient. In ancient Rome, doctor’s used a variety of substances for cures and as anesthetic for surgery.

Moreover, the nature of the society encouraged a fear of poisoning and hence this fear opened the door for doctors to promote or produce antidotes. Many of the drugs and medications used at that time, seems today like potions and old wives’ tales.

For example, a piece of dried hyene skin would be given to help the victim of a mad-dog bite. Many of the pills prescribed at that time contains primarily, dried bugs. But nowadays, people discovered good pain relievers and today even purity of drug is taken into consideration.

Anesthetics in earlier days and did not compare to today’s standards. Surgeons wanted to minimize the screaming and fighting of patients during sugar. The pain of the patient however scared many of the surgeons, so they used opium, henbane and mandrake. Opium numbed the patient and limited movement.

Henbane induced sleeping and a slight amnesia. Finally, mandrake slowed the heart rate and deadened pain. Even with the help of these anesthetics, the standard for a good surgeon was speed.

Doctors relieved patients in more ways than cures and surgeries. Fear of poisoning ran wild at certain times. Many deaths, which actually occurred due to other causes, were though to be due to poisoning

This fear gave the catalyst for the creation of antidotes by many doctors. This excessive fear and the creation of dubious and the creation of dubious antidotes uncovered many legitimate materials for actual drugs and medications. Prior to the United States, Civil War, native healers, midwives, herbalists and witches, mostly women were the primary caregivers.

Then the discipline of scientific medicine was imported from Europe, Germany etc. The germ theory of disease and the discovery of the Tubercle bacillus by Koch, have led to the notion of a specific cure for a specific ailment. It became the basis for the production of synthetic drugs. The synthetic drugs gradually replaced the herbals that previously lined the shelves of drugstores. Synthetic penicillin ushered in the synthetic drug revolution. Herb medicines made their way to food supplement stores.

Herbs are medicinal plants that can be administered as the whole plant or plant parts or by extracting one or more ingredients with solvents to yield tinctures, tea or other extracts.

Synthetic drugs are synthesized chemically in the laboratory to produce drugs not found in nature. The herbal drugs are considered less patent than prescribed medicines. Herbs contain several active ingredients that are chemically similar and herbal ingredients work synergistically to contribute to, or detract from, the therapeutic effect of each individual ingredient.

Whether human made or natural, the most important criteria for a medicine’s use a safety, effctiveness and quality. In the future, the use of herbals and synthetic drugs in complementary fashion can reduce toxicities and maximize therapeutic outcomes.