CHEMICAL INVESTIGATION OF CERTAIN MEDICINALLY IMPORTANT SPECIES OF THE FAMILY APOCYANACEAE

Abstract

The economic importance of plants in human affairs is immense and has been so since the evolution of man. For eons, man has relied upon plants as a source of food and medicines. By experience^ he has generally realised that different plants possess different natures or chemical composition. Until the beginning of the great era of natural product chemistry in the mid-nineteenth century, these chemical constituents remained ill defined in a structural sense; nevertheless, they were sufficiently characteris tic to enable early herbalists to classify plants according to the "virtues 'they possessed. Although chemical plant taxonomy then has a respectable antiquity, interest in the chemical relationship of plants waned for many years as structural considerations consumed theinterest of most phytochemists and it is only in last decade or two that the subject has re-emerged as the field of endeavour of a significant number of workers.........