ASPECTS REGARDING THE EXPLOITATION OF MEDICINAL AND AROMATIC PLANTS

The role of medicinal and aromatic plants in prophylactic and curativemedicine is long known, being increasingly appreciated worldwide and in ourcountry. Man used natural resources in the middle of which he lived, from thebeginning of its existence. He found in the vegetal and animal world the livelihood,food, clothes and solutions to remedy the organic suffering. Gradually, he managedto identify plants that were beneficial to his health, for healing wounds and curingvarious diseases. From traditional medicine to modern medicine, the practice ofhealing human suffering could not part with medicinal plants, which are aninvaluable pool of active principles, bundled into the immensity of flowers, leaves,roots etc. Human civilizations that have succeeded each brought their contributionto the knowledge and use of a growing number of medicinal plants. Many scholarsof ancient times until nowadays have also recorded in their writings the medicinalqualities and the proper way of use of many plants. At the same time with thedevelopment of chemistry it also became possible the knowledge of activesubstances (active principles) in plants. Until a century ago, about three quarters ofpharmaceutical preparations were made from vegetable products, then syntheticmedicines have come to hold more weight and medicinal plants were considered bysome ʺtherapeutic fossilsʺ. The interest in therapy with pharmaceutical productsderived from plants is growing steadily from the second half of the last century,due to the fact that they are more compatible with the human body, being closer inmetabolic terms and more easily tolerated than synthetic medicines. Currentmedical trends are grafted increasingly on the use of phytotherapy (treatment withpharmaceutical products derived from plants), limiting the explosive use ofsynthetic drugs to the strictly necessary. Phytotherapy is a real possibility inmodern therapeutics alongside chemotherapy, physiotherapy and balneology,electrotherapy, food hygiene etc.