Medicinal plants

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American medicinal plants, particularly those of Mexico, attracted attention immediately after the discovery and it was with these plants that scientific studies of the New World began. For European medicine, which was still at a medieval stage, the discovery of the purgative properties of Ipomaea jalapa, the Michoacan root, was evidently sufficient reason to justify Dr Francisco Hernández' (1517- 1587) expedition to New Spain. Numerous plants were included in the European pharmacopoeia and some of them, despite their synthetic substitutes, are still of worldwide importance; for example, the genera Cinchona, Dioscorea, Ipecacuanha and Smilax. The first three of these have been cultivated but a large proportion of their supply for consumption is gathered. Most medicinal substances are obtained from the wild plants and, in many cases, it is not certain if they have the properties attributed to them. Bordering on the medicinal area are the hallucinogenic plants, distributed among numerous higher plant families; for instance, the Cactaceae (Lophophora, Tricholerus), the Leguminosae (Adenunthera, Erythrina), the Myristicaceae (Virola) or fungi (Psylocibe).

TABLE 1 Cultivated plants originating in the New World, and their probable distribution at the time of the discovery

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