ABSTRACT

Dear Reader,

In the ancient times, the Vaidyaraj was expected to develop therapies to prevent or treat diseases. Many times, these physicians prepared medicines freshly using plants cultivated in their gardens or collected from the forests. These were patient based medicines and highly customized for the individual patient (based on nadi pariksha or pulse diagnosis or similar techniques). Similar approaches were used in other ancient cultures of the world such as Egypt, Greece and China. Little changed in the method of diagnosis and treatment till the industrial revolution. In the last century, systematic research led to an in-depth understanding of cell biology and biochemistry. This paved the path of understanding of cause and progression of disease at the cellular level. This helped the development of synthetic drugs such as analgesics and antibiotics during the Second World War. These drugs had a major advantage over the plant-based medicines as they were specific for the disease through receptor binding and treating the symptoms appropriately.