Traditional Mediterranean and European herbal medicines.
BACKGROUND
Written history allows tracing back Mediterranean and European medical traditions to Greek antiquity. The epidemiological shift triggered by the rise of modern medicine and industrialization is reflected in contemporary reliance and preferences for certain herbal medicines.


METHODS
We sketch the development and transmission of written herbal medicine through Mediterranean and European history and point out the opportunity to connect with modern traditions.


RESULTS
An ethnopharmacological database linking past and modern medical traditions could serve as a tool for crosschecking contemporary ethnopharmacological field-data as well as a repository for data mining. Considering that the diachronic picture emerging from such a database has an epidemiological base this could lead to new hypotheses related to evolutionary medicine.


CONCLUSIONS
The advent of systems pharmacology and network pharmacology opens new perspectives for studying past and current herbal medicine. Since a large part of modern drugs has its roots in ancient traditions one may expect new leads for drug development from novel systemic studies, as well as evidence for the activity of certain herbal preparations.
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Cagliari, 09124 Cagliari, Italy. Electronic address: marcoleonti@netscape.net.
Marco
M
Leonti
Natural Products Laboratory, IBL, Leiden University, 2300 Leiden, The Netherlands.
Robert
R
Verpoorte
D020834:Ethnopharmacology / Q000266:history*; D005060:Europe; D029001:Herbal Medicine / Q000266:history*; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000266:history*; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D010602:Pharmacopoeias as Topic / Q000266:history*; D008517:Phytotherapy / Q000266:history; D010946:Plants, Medicinal
Europe; Evolutionary medicine; Herbals in history; Mediterranean; Traditional medicine