Books about Pharmacognosy from Amazon.com

For millennia, humans have looked to nature for remedies to ailments great and small. Long before formal science enabled us to take a systematic approach to medicine, healers used plants to alleviate pain, ease the symptoms of dozens of diseases, and treat complaints of every kind. And today, countless people still use medicinal plants, whether in traditional roles or as building blocks for new research and innovative drugs.


Featuring 350 full-color photographs, botanical drawings, and maps, this accessible, fact-filled book is based on the work of renowned botanical experts and presents alphabetically arranged, beautifully illustrated entries for hundreds of plants touted for millennia to soothe, even heal. Each is clearly described, with full details of its physical appearance and medicinal uses; its origins and geographic distribution, how it's harvested and used in conventional and alternative medicine, a range map; and more.


It's also a fascinating medical chronicle filled with informative sidebars on everything from ancient folklore to the latest research. Readers learn how aspirin evolved from a concoction of willow bark to the familiar white pill of today, how the foxglove's flowery beauty contributes to the potent heart drug digitalis, and how many other now common treatments have deep historical and cultural roots. It's a journey that starts many centuries ago in remote places like the Amazon rain forest, where shamans practiced their powerful curative magic of plants, and leads to the high-tech pharmaceutical labs of today's scientists working to discover new plant-based drugs that can be used effectively to treat diseases major and minor alike, from cancer to the common cold..
Price: $14.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Written by a leading authority with an excellent reputation and ability for writing a good narrative, Drug Discovery: A History is a far cry from simply a list of chemical structures.

This lively new text considers the origins, development and history of medicines that generate high media interest and have a huge social and economic impact on society.

Set within a wide historical, social and cultural context, it provides expanded coverage of pre-twentieth century drugs, the huge advances made in the twentieth century and the latest developments in drug research.

Hallmark features:

• Up-to-the-minute information in drug research
• Vignettes of special and unusual information, and anecdotes
• Discusses drug prototypes from all sources
• More comprehensive than other volumes on history of drug discovery

From the reviews:

"...an excellent bibliographic resource for those interested in the background papers that serve as the foundation for discovery of specific drug entities." JOURNAL OF MEDICAL CHEMISTRY, June 2006

"...a very comprehensive overview of drug development. It should be on the shelf on any aspiring pharmacist, medicinal chemist, or person interested in the history of therapeutic agents." JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION, February 2006

"...a very readable and closely researched book..." CHEMISTRY & INDUSTRY, October 2005.
Price: $54.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This resource covers the fundamentals of pharmacognosy and phytotherapy for students, practicing pharmacists, herbalists, and others with an interest in the medicinal uses of plants.

• Gives students an overview of all aspects of the field
• Provides a useful sourcebook for practicing pharmacists
• Combines therapeutic aspects with natural science and chemistry in one convenient resource
• Promotes the use of safe and well documented herbal remedies
• Further reading suggestions will lead students to more in-depth reference works

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Price: $59.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

It’s the business of saving lives.

Miracle Medicines goes behind the scenes of the pharmaceutical industry and into the high-security laboratories to tell the stories of the men and women---chemists, physiologists, medical and clinical researchers, engineers---who have chosen to toil for years in the lab in order to transform scientific theories into new lifesaving medicines.

You’ll witness the day-to-day labors, victories and defeats of the dedicated professionals who are waging a war against the diseases that still plague mankind. From the confines of their laboratories, these pharmaceutical adventurers explore unknown territories in health and science.

Miracle Medicines reveals what really happens during the long and uncertain journey that each new drug and its creators must endure from theory, to research, to testing and, finally, FDA approval and delivery to the public. It’s a very human story within the context of fascinating scientific innovation.

Through first hand interviews you’ll also meet the patients who benefit from these manmade miracles and learn how, within their bloodstreams, an ongoing battle is raging.

The drugs profiled are:
* Advair: GlaxoSmithKline’s revolutionary asthma medication, the first packaged as both a control and emergency drug.
* Gleevec: The Novartis’ chronic myeloid leukemia treatment born from decades of medical research in a field of study that was once considered hopeless.
* Humalog: Eli Lilly’s reinvention of insulin to control diabetes has been described as being better than nature
* Lipitor: Pfizer’s miracle antidote for high cholesterol that was nearly lost to the pharmaceutical vaults and has since become the world’s top-selling medicine.
* Norvir: Abbott’s contribution to the fight against HIV that nearly erases all traces of the disease from the bloodstream and prolongs the life of patients.
* Remicade: Created for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and other Immune Mediated Inflammatory Diseases, Johnson & Johnson’s revolutionary biomedicine was developed from technology that once was only found in science fiction.
* Seroquel: AstraZeneca’s treatment for both schizophrenia and bipolar mania that has given millions of psychiatrics a new lease on life.

This compelling and truth-revealing book will forever change the way you view the medicines in your medicine cabinet, and the people who create them..
Price: $4.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Medicinal Natural Products, Second Edition is a comprehensive guide providing information on all classes of natural products in medicine. It builds upon fundamental chemical principles and demonstrates a unique integration of plant, microbial and animal natural products in one volume. The text guides the reader through a wealth of diverse natural metabolites used in medicine with sources, production methods, use as drugs and modes of action all extensively covered. Taking a chemistry based approach it combines traditional pharmacognosy with medicinal chemistry. The structure is user-friendly and includes the acclaimed grey boxes on groups of products and detailed mechanistic explanations.
* Adopts a novel biosynthetic theme rather than a traditional descriptive approach
* Includes extensive further reading at the end of the chapter
* Thoroughly revised and updated to incorporate comprehensive coverage of plant, microbial and animal products
* Includes the latest developments in the field
* New material on genetic manipulation of biosynthetic pathways and non-mevalonate pathway to terpanoids
* User-friendly format including extensive use of chemical schemes with annotated mechanistic explanations.
Price: $57.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For thousands of years -- indeed, for all of human history except for the past 50 to 70 years in Western societies -- plants have been our chief source of medicine The fascinating story that unfolds in the pages of this book is much more than a catalog of natural cures. Equal parts scientific inquiry and cultural history, it's nothing less than a chronicle of the healer's art as it evolved from folk remedies to modern science. It's also an account of humanity's continuing quest to discover new medicines and to unravel the complex and often deeply mysterious interactions between the biochemistry of plants and the human body.

From the doctor-philosophers of classical antiquity to the shamans of today's rain forests, healers have prescribed a multitude of cures culled from the flora around them, and in many societies these ancient treatments are still in everyday use. In India, for example, Ayurvedic physicians continue a tradition first codified in written form many centuries before the birth of Christ. The origins of Chinese medicine are similarly shrouded in myth, but its effectiveness has been proved time and time again although the reasons why frequently remain elusive. And in many cases, Western medicine has been too quick to reject as "old wives' tales" the lessons learned and refined over countless generations.

In Nature's Medicine you'll learn how a malaria-stricken Spanish countess was cured by the bark of a Peruvian tree, the source of what we now call quinine, and how 18th-century doctors used digitalis for all sorts of ills -- but, ironically, not for heart disease. You'll discover that few natural compounds have been used as the basis for modern pharmaceutical drugs but that many have served as molecular templates for proprietary synthetic formulas. And you'll see how ancient theories based on different views of the human body can lead to surprisingly effective medicines.

Featuring some 200 full-color photographs, period illustrations from old medical texts, and watercolors illustrating a catalog of 102 healing herbs, Nature's Medicine is at once a vivid historical chronicle, a valuable compendium of healers' lore, and a revealing excursion into the world of plants whose power to cure has been known for millennia but is only beginning to be understood..
Price: $5.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A fresh examination of the past successes of natural products as medicines and their new future from both conventional and new technologies High-performance liquid chromatography profiling, combinatorial synthesis, genomics, proteomics, DNA shuffling, bioinformatics, and genetic manipulation all now make it possible to rapidly evaluate the activities of extracts as well as purified components derived from microbes, plants, and marine organisms. The authors apply these methods to new natural product drug discoveries, to microbial diversity, to specific groups of products (Chinese herbal drugs, antitumor drugs from microbes and plants, terpenoids, and arsenic compounds), and to specific sources (the sea, rainforest, and endophytes). These new opportunities show how research and development trends in the pharmaceutical industry can advance to include both synthetic compounds and natural products, and how this paradigm shift can be more productive and efficacious..
Price: $89.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Natural Products have been important sources of useful drugs from prehistoric times to the 21st century This title reviews and discusses important contributions to the discovery of drugs generated by research on natural products. Total synthesis of natural products with interesting biological activities is paving the way for the preparation of improved analogues. The methods of combinatorial chemistry permit the selection of the best drug from a large number of candidates. Beyond synthesis and evaluation of organic molecules, a number of bio-organic methods are coming to the fore..
Price: $83.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]