PROCEEDINGS OF CONFERENCE ON STUDIES ON THE EXTRACTIVES OF THE PLANT GENUS RYANIA

摘要

In addition to their food needs, primitive peoples, from prehistoric tunes to the present, have relied upon plant sources for medicinal agents and for poisons for hunting and intertribal warfare. These plants, selected by trial and error through the ages, have provided the extracts whose active principles have served as models for modern chemistry and medicine in the development of many synthetic drugs. For a time it appeared that most forseeable needs for new drugs might be met on a purely synthetic approach based on information acquired in the study of these known plant principles.