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Catalog of Herbs
Published in James A. Duke, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, 2018
Quite ornamental, the common name manacán is attributed to the most beautiful girl of the Tupi Indian tribe of Brazil and transferred to the most beautiful flower of the forest. Brunfelsia uniflora is the most important medicinal species, as this is the species of choice in the drug trade as manaca root. Root extracts were once used in arrow poisons. Readers are referred to Tim Plowman’s interesting and detailed account.109 It was employed by the Tupi both for magical and medicinal purposes. A perfume is extracted from the fragrant flowers with ether. R. P. Iyers’ research reported in the Chemical Marketing Reporter110 identified “hopeanine” as an active antiinflammatory agent (yield rate of only 4 mg ho-peanine from one kilogram of powdered root).
Medical microbiology
Published in Lois N. Magner, Oliver J. Kim, A History of Medicine, 2017
The legendary Greek hero Hercules provides an example of the use of chemical and biological weapons. To chase the Many-Headed Hydra from its den, Hercules used fiery arrows coated with pitch. After killing the Hydra, Hercules “dissected” the monstrous body and dipped his arrows in its venom, thus creating a supply of poisoned arrows. Hydra poison may be a myth, but curare, snake venom, and other toxic materials have been used as real arrow poisons. Legends about biological and chemical weapons appear in ancient texts from Europe, the Mideast, India, and China. Real premodern bioterrorists might have tried to spread plague or smallpox, but it would have been difficult to determine whether an epidemic was intentionally caused.
Dentistry in medical history
Published in Marshall Joseph Becker, Jean MacIntosh Turfa, The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry, 2017
Marshall Joseph Becker, Jean MacIntosh Turfa
The search for medicinal plants continues to this day. The recent identification of the Pacific yew product taxol as an agent useful in cancer therapy is part of an ancient tradition, dating from at least the Bronze Age, of focusing trade and exploration on the search for pharmaceuticals. These concerns were important aspects of the discovery of the New World, from which the first great exports were pharmaceutical plants (Griffenhagen 1992). These New World spices (droghi, in Italian) included tobacco, which “killeth worms” in the teeth and serves against the “bytings of venomous beasts” (Monardes 1577: 76–91, in Griffenhagen 1992: 136). The arrow poisons of Native American peoples also were sought for the sake of their medicinal potential, but like tobacco, were equally dangerous.
Targeting central nervous system pathologies with nanomedicines
Published in Journal of Drug Targeting, 2019
Shoshy Mizrahy, Anna Gutkin, Paolo Decuzzi, Dan Peer
The rationale of utilising pathogen derived ligands is very intriguing as these targeting moieties are a product of long evolutionary processes for achieving CNS entry and, therefore, highly verified. Thus, inquiring of the pathogen (viral or bacterial) and venom derived targets supplies a new pool of previously unexplored targets. Particularly interesting is the acetylcholine receptor (nAchR), which is targeted by the Rabies virus, plant extract alkaloid arrow poisons and snake venom components such as three-finger toxins (Table 1 and Figure 1). Nevertheless, it should be noted that pathogen and venom-derived proteins are both toxic and highly immunogenic in their complete form. Therefore, the specific fraction sufficient for targeting without inducing unwanted effects should be isolated. The general concept of using pathogen inspired systems was reviewed elsewhere [121,122]. Here, we will focus on systems that matured to in-vivo delivery of therapeutics.