Bronchodilator Activity in Traditional Medicines: Gift of God Kingdom

Since ancient times humanity has depended on the diversity of plant resources for food, clothing, shelter, and traditional medicine to cure myriads of ailments. Early humans recognized their dependence on nature in both health and illness. Physical evidence of the use of herbal remedies has been found some 60,000 years ago in a burial site of a Neanderthal man uncovered in 1960 in a cave in northern Iraq. Here, scientists found great quantities of plant pollen, some of which came from medicinal plants still used today. The first written records detailing the use of herbs in the treatment of illness are in the form of Mesopotamian clay tablet writings and Egyptian papyrus. Led by instinct, taste and experience, primitive men and women treated illness by using plants, animal parts, and minerals that were not part of their usual diet. Primitive people learned by trial and error to distinguish useful plants with beneficial effects from those that were toxic or non-active, and also which combinations or processing methods had to be used to gain consistent and optimal results. Even in ancient cultures, tribal people methodically collected information on herbs and developed well-defined herbal pharmacopeias. Traditional medicine evolved over centuries, depending on local flora, culture, and religion. Nature has been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of years, and an impressive number of modern drugs have been isolated from natural sources, particularly plants and with many based on their use in traditional medicine. By using medicinal chemistry and combinatorial chemical and biosynthetic technology, novel natural product leads will be optimized on the basis of their biological activities to yield effective chemotherapeutic and other bioactive agents (Cragg et. al. 2005). During the past decades, public interest in natural therapies, namely herbal medicine, has increased dramatically not only in developing countries but mainly in industrialized countries (Calixto, 2000). The market for ayurvedic medicines is estimated to be expanding at 20% annually. Sales of medicinal plants have grown by nearly 25% in India during 198796, the highest rate of growth in the world. The global trade in medicinal plants is of the