What about Dinner? Chemical and Microresidue Analysis Reveals the Function of Late Neolithic Ceramic Pans.

The Late Neolithic palafitte site, Ustie na Drim, in the northern part of Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia), excavated in 1962, offered ceramic fragments of large, flat, elongated pans. These artifacts could be dated by relative chronology to roughly around 5200-5000 BC. According to their shape and technological traits, the ceramic pans were probably used for baking. The attached materials on the surface of studied pan fragments were sampled for consequent chemical and microscopical analyses (i.e., analyses of starch, phytoliths, and microscopic animal remains). An immunological method revealed the presence of pork proteins in samples. The presence of organic residues of animal origin was, moreover, confirmed by the detection of cholesterol using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Analysis of detected microscopic botanical objects revealed starch grains of several plants (i.e., oak, cattail, and grasses). An interesting find was the hair of a beetle larva, which could be interpreted contextually as the khapra beetle, a pest of grain and flour. Based on our data, we suppose that the ceramic pans from Ustie na Drim were used for the preparation of meals containing meat from common livestock in combination with cereals and wild plants.

A Brief History of Psoriasis Management in Canada.

Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory disease with a varying degree of clinical presentations. Managing psoriasis has always been arduous due to its chronicity and its propensity to relapse. Prior to the development of targeted biologic therapies, there were few effective treatments for psoriasis. Ancient psoriasis therapies included pinetar, plant extracts, psychotherapy, arsenic, and ammoniated mercury. In the 19th century, chrysarobin was developed. Then, in the early half of the 20th century, anthralin and coal tar were in widespread use. In the latter half of the 20th century, treatments were limited to topical first-line therapies, systemic drugs, and phototherapy. However, as the treatment of psoriasis has undergone a revolutionary change with the development of novel biologic therapies, patients with moderate to severe psoriasis have been able to avail therapies with high efficacy and durability along with an acceptable safety profile. This article is a brief historical review of the management of psoriasis prior to the inception of biologics and with the development of novel biologic therapies.

Early phytocannabinoid chemistry to endocannabinoids and beyond.

Isolation and structure elucidation of most of the major cannabinoid constituents--including Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ(9)-THC), which is the principal psychoactive molecule in Cannabis sativa--was achieved in the 1960s and 1970s. It was followed by the identification of two cannabinoid receptors in the 1980s and the early 1990s and by the identification of the endocannabinoids shortly thereafter. There have since been considerable advances in our understanding of the endocannabinoid system and its function in the brain, which reveal potential therapeutic targets for a wide range of brain disorders.

"Bunanje": XX Century Abuse of Atropa Belladonna Halucinogenic Berries in Continental Croatia.

BACKGROUND: Atropa belladonna (Engl. deadly nightshade, Cro. velebilje, bunika) is a plant containing pharmacologically active, potentially toxic alkaloids: atropine, hyocyamine and scopolamine. The risk of poisoning in children is important because of possible confusion of black/dark blue belladonna fruit berries with other edible berries. There are many reports in literature of accidental intoxication but no report on traditional intentional usage to achieve hallucinogenic effects. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Here we report purposeful ingestion of Atropa belladonna berries for hallucinatory effects among adolescents in Bjelovar region in north part of Croatia. This has been happening among children/adolescents while they were grazing animals. We visited a dozen villages in the region and spoke to the oldest mostly to the elderly residents. RESULTS: The existence of such abuse of Atropa belladonna berries in the first part of XX century was confirmed by eight narrators from five distinct places in the region. Interestingly this type of behavior had a specific name "bunanje", unknown in Croatian language, but clearly associated with local plant name bun or bunika. According to informants consumers of berries would develop delirium or hallucinations associated behavior, incoherent and meaningless speech. However nobody remembers any severe case of poisoning. At the regional hospital in Bjelovar in the Pediatric department, there is no record of poisoning with Atropa belladonna. To our knowledge this is the first report of intentional consumption of belladonna berries to achieve the hallucinogenic effect. CONCLUSIONS: The fact that the custom was observed in five distinct spots and it had its specific name "bunanje" suggest that those are not isolated random events but the type of practices; seasonal abuse of hallucinogenic berries of Atropa belladonna, among rural adolescents in the first part of XX century.

[A Multi-arm Placebo-controlled Study with Glutamic Acid Conducted in Rostock in 1953/1954]. / Eine Rostocker Placebo-kontrollierte mehrarmige Studie mit Glutaminsäure bei Kindern und Jugendlichen 1953/54.

A Multi-arm Placebo-controlled Study with Glutamic Acid Conducted in Rostock in 1953/1954 Glutamic acid was commonly used in the treatment of intellectually disabled children in the 50s. Koch reported first results of an observation of 140 children treated with glutamic acid in 1952. In this line is the multi-arm placebo-controlled study reported here. The original study protocols were available. 58 children with speech problems who attending a school of special needs received glutamic acid, or vitamin B, or St.-John's-wort. The effect of glutamic acid was in few cases an improvement of attention. On the other hand restlessness and stutter increased. The majority of all reported a weight loss. The treatment with vitamin B showed a positive effect concerning concentration. The treatment with St.-John's wort was stopped caused by headache and vomiting in eight of nine cases. The results of the study reported here are unpublished. The reason may be that until the 60s the effects of glutamic acid in the treatment of intellectually disabled children were in generally overestimated.

Discovery of Bioactive Compounds by the UIC-ICBG Drug Discovery Program in the 18 Years Since 1998.

The International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) Program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a program aimed to address the interdependent issues of inventory and conservation of biodiversity, drug discovery and sustained economic growth in both developing and developed countries. It is an interdisciplinary program involving the extensive synergies and collaborative efforts of botanists, chemists and biologists in the countries of Vietnam, Laos and the USA. The UIC-ICBG drug discovery efforts over the past 18 years have resulted in the collection of a cumulative total of more than 5500 plant samples (representing more than 2000 species), that were evaluated for their potential biological effects against cancer, HIV, bird flu, tuberculosis and malaria. The bioassay-guided fractionation and separation of the bioactive plant leads resulted in the isolation of approximately 300 compounds of varying degrees of structural complexity and/or biological activity. The present paper summarizes the significant drug discovery achievements made by the UIC-ICBG team of multidisciplinary collaborators in the project over the period of 1998-2012 and the projects carried on in the subsequent years by involving the researchers in Hong Kong.

Scientific evaluation of medicinal plants used for the treatment of abnormal uterine bleeding by Avicenna.

PURPOSE: Abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) is one of the prevalent gynecological disorders that cause considerable morbidity and management of that plays an important role in protecting women's health. This review focuses on medicinal plants mentioned by Avicenna, a great Iranian philosopher and physician (A.D. 980-1037), in his book Canon for treatment of AUB. METHODS: Medicinal plants mentioned in Canon for treatment of AUB were elicited and searched in electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and Cochrane library to find studies that confirmed their efficacy. Data were collected for the years 1980-2014. RESULTS: The findings included 23 plants belonging to 18 families. Scientific findings have revealed that these plants control AUB through four mechanisms of action including inhibition of inflammatory process, inhibition of prostaglandins production, antiproliferative activity on human cervical cancer cells (HeLa), and estrogenic activity. All of the plants exhibited anti-inflammatory activity in vitro and/or in vivo. Cuscuta chinensis and Portulaca oleracea exhibited estrogenic activity. Boswellia carteri, Lens culinaris, Myrtus communis, Polygonum aviculare, Pistacia lentiscus, and Punica granatum have revealed inhibitory activity on biosynthesis of prostaglandins. Some of the mentioned plants including: Ceratonia siliqua, Cuscuta chinensis, Cuscuta epithymum, Cydonia oblonga, Paeonia sp., Portulaca oleracea, Solanum nigrum, Rumex acetosa and Onopordum acanthium have shown antiproliferative activity on HeLa cells. CONCLUSION: Investigation of traditional Iranian medicine literatures can lead to the identification of effective natural medicines for the management of AUB; however, conclusive confirmation of the efficacy and safety of these treatments needs more evaluations.

An Empire's Extract: Chemical Manipulations of Cinchona Bark in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic World.

In 1790, the Spanish Crown sent a "botanist-chemist" to South America to implement production of a chemical extract made from cinchona bark, a botanical medicament from the Andes used throughout the Atlantic World to treat malarial fevers. Even though the botanist-chemist's efforts to produce the extract failed, this episode offers important insight into the role of chemistry in the early modern Atlantic World. Well before the Spanish Crown tried to make it a tool of empire, chemistry provided a vital set of techniques that circulated among a variety of healers, who used such techniques to make botanical medicaments useful and intelligible in new ways.

[A New Spain medication: magisterial oil and salutiferous liquor]. / Un medicamento novohispano: aceite magistral y licor salutífero.

During the 16th century, physicians who lived and cured New Spain's population, attended their profession privately and institutionally; few of them were authors of medical works, and it is not easy to discover one who invented and used successfully medicament of his own development. We have found one, Joan Martel, a Spaniard, who came to New Spain and here cured and served. He invented and used a salutiferous oil and liquor widely accepted by other physicians, but mainly by the neighbors of Mexico City. In reward for his successfully medicament, he received the appointment of physician at the Royal Court Prison. This article is dedicated to him, and his until now unknown life, his work and the relation between his oil with a similar product in Spain. This study forms part of larger social-historical research that deals with "Physicians in New Spain, their social and professional roles (16 to 19 centuries)."

[A short history of anti-rheumatic therapy--V. analgesics]. / Piccola storia della terapia antireumatica--V. Gli analgesici.

The pharmacological treatment of pain has very ancient origins, when plant-derived products were used, including mandrake extracts and opium, a dried latex obtained from Papaver somniferum. In the XVI and XVII centuries opium came into the preparation of two compounds widely used for pain relief: laudanum and Dover's powder. The analgesic properties of extracts of willow bark were then recognized and later, in the second half of the XIX century, experimental studies on chemically synthesized analgesics were planned, thus promoting the marketing of some derivatives of para-amino-phenol and pyrazole, the predecessors of paracetamol and metamizol. In the XX century, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were synthesized, such as phenylbutazone, which was initially considered primarily a pain medication. The introduction on the market of centrally acting analgesics, such as tramadol, sometimes used in the treatment of rheumatic pain, is quite recent.

[The extractive: life and death of an uncommon product of proximate analysis]. / L'extractif: vie et mort d'un produit singulier de l'analyse immédiate.

Issued from the pharmaceutical tradition, the "extractive", formerly "extract", is a typical artefact of proximate analysis introduced in the new nomenclature of 1787. After beign one of its most active promotors, Fourcroy published with Vauquelin a posthumous paper in 1810 in which he expressed some doubts about the substance. Theoretically present in almost all vegetable extracts, some chemists, pharmacists and physicians try to isolate the extractive without success and instead accumulated contradictory results. At the end, the eviction of this chimaera held by sceptical chemists such as Chevreul and Braconnot and the conversion of other analysts, dismissed extractive and the name almost gradually disappears at the begining of the 1830s.

Plant Adaptogens-History and Future Perspectives.

Adaptogens are synthetic compounds (bromantane, levamisole, aphobazole, bemethyl, etc.) or plant extracts that have the ability to enhance the body's stability against physical loads without increasing oxygen consumption. Extracts from Panax ginseng, Eleutherococcus senticosus, Rhaponticum carthamoides, Rhodiola rosea, and Schisandra chinensis are considered to be naturally occurring adaptogens and, in particular, plant adaptogens. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of plant adaptogens in the past and now, as well as to outline the prospects of their future applications. The use of natural adaptogens by humans has a rich history-they are used in recovery from illness, physical weakness, memory impairment, and other conditions. About 50 years ago, plant adaptogens were first used in professional sports due to their high potential to increase the body's resistance to stress and to improve physical endurance. Although now many people take plant adaptogens, the clinical trials on human are limited. The data from the meta-analysis showed that plant adaptogens could provide a number of benefits in the treatment of chronic fatigue, cognitive impairment, and immune protection. In the future, there is great potential to register medicinal products that contain plant adaptogens for therapeutic purposes.

Geopolitics of bitterness: Deciphering the history and cultural biogeography of Quassia amara L.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Quassia amara L. recently came into the spotlight in French Guiana, when it became the object of a biopiracy claim. Due to the numerous use records throughout the Guiana shield, at least since the 18th century, a thorough investigation of its origin seemed relevant and timely. In the light of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya protocol, questions about the origin of local knowledge are important to debate. AIM OF THE STUDY: Defining cultural biogeography as the dynamics through space and time of biocultural complexes, we used this theoretical framework to shed light on the complex biogeographical and cultural history of Q. amara. We explored in particular the possible transfer of medicinal knowledge on an Old World species to a botanically related New World one by enslaved Africans in Suriname. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Historical and contemporary literature research was performed by means of digitized manuscripts, archives and databases from the 17th to the 21st century. We retrieved data from digitized herbarium vouchers in herbaria of the Botanic Garden Meise (Belgium); Naturalis Biodiversity Center (the Netherlands); Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum (USA); Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (UK); the IRD Herbarium, French Guiana and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (France). Vernacular names were retrieved from literature and herbarium specimens and compared to verify the origin of Quassia amara and its uses. RESULTS: Our exploration of digitized herbarium vouchers resulted in 1287 records, of which 661 were Q. amara and 636 were Q. africana. We observed that the destiny of this species, over at least 300 years, interweaves politics, economy, culture and medicine in a very complex way. Quassia amara's uses are difficult to attribute to specific cultural groups: the species is widely distributed in Central and South America, where it is popular among many ethnic groups. The species spread from Central to South America during the early 18th century due to political and economic reasons. This migration possibly resulted from simultaneous migration by religious orders (Jesuits) from Central America to northern South America and by Carib-speaking Amerindians (from northern South America to Suriname). Subsequently, through colonial trade networks, Q. amara spread to the rest of the world. The absence of African-derived local names in the Guiana shield suggests that Q. africana was not sufficiently familiar to enslaved Africans in the region that they preserved its names and transferred the associated medicinal knowledge to Q. amara. CONCLUSIONS: Cultural biogeography has proven an interesting concept to reconstruct the dynamics of biocultural interactions through space and time, while herbarium databases have shown to be useful to decipher evolution of local plant knowledge. Tracing the origin of a knowledge is nevertheless a complex adventure that deserves time and interdisciplinary studies.

The Cannabis Spread throughout the Continents and its Therapeutic Use in History.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis sativa L. (C. sativa) is a plant whose use as a therapeutic agent shares its origins with the first Far East's human societies. Cannabis has been used not only for recreational purposes but as food to obtain textile fibers, to produce hemp paper, to treat many physical and mental disorders. AIM: This review aims to provide a complete assessment of the deep knowledge of the cannabis psychoactive effects and medicinal properties in the course of history covering i.) The empirical use of the seeds and the inflorescences to treat many physical ailments by the ancient Oriental physicians' ii.) The current use of cannabis as a therapeutic agent after the discovery of its key psychoactive constituent and the human endogenous endocannabinoid system. METHODS: This study was performed through a detailed analysis of the studies on the historical significance and medical applications of Cannabis sativa by using international scientific databases, historical and medical books, ancient Greek and Chinese manuscripts translations, library and statistical data from government reports and texts from the National Library of Greece (Stavros Niarchos Foundation), from the School of Health Sciences of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece). We selected papers and texts focusing on a historical point of view about the medical importance of the plant and its applications for a therapeutic purpose in the past. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Through a detailed analysis of the available resources about the origins of C. sativa, we found that its use by ancient civilizations as a source of food and textile fibers dates back over 10,000 years, while its therapeutic applications have been improved over the centuries, from the ancient East medicine of the 2nd and 1st millennium B.C. to the more recent introduction in the Western world after the 1st century A.D. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Cannabis and its derivatives have been considered as a menace and banned throughout the world, but nowadays, they are still the most widely consumed illicit drugs all over the world. Its legalization in some jurisdictions has been accompanied by new lines of research to investigate its possible applications for medical and therapeutic purposes.

A fond farewell to the foxglove? The decline in the use of digitalis.

Since William Withering's report on the foxglove in 1785, digitalis, in 1 form or another, has remained a mainstay in the treatment of congestive heart failure and as a means of rate control in atrial fibrillation. Recently, with the introduction of potent diuretics and other agents for the treatment of these conditions, there has been a deemphasis on the role of digitalis despite its therapeutic value. Continued evidence of the frequent usefulness of digitalis in both conditions suggests that this venerable drug should remain within the therapeutic armamentarium of cardiologists and other physicians.