Understanding Medicinal Plants: Their Chemistry and Therapeutic Action

ISBN-13: 9780789015525 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 330 str.

Bryan Abbott Hanson

Opis

Understanding Medicinal Plants is a unique work designed to explain the chemical workings of healing herbs to people who are intimidated by chemistry. This beautifully illustrated, reader-friendly guide explores the molecules of medicinal plants and the pharmacology behind their actions on the human body. Understanding Medicinal Plants aims for the middle ground between a technical manual for highly trained individuals and a book for the general public that oversimplifies the material. It will be valuable to non-science majors, biology majors, interested scientists of different disciplines, and practitioners and students of herbalism and complementary medicine.

Spis treści

• Preface
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Chapter 1. Introduction
  
• Chapter 2. Interpreting the Symbolism of Chemical Structures, or, Finding Your Way Around a Molecule
  
• The Basic Rules of Bonding
  
• What Do the Lines Mean?
  
• Recognizing the Functional Groups
  
• Naming Molecules
  
• Sameness: Molecular Formulas and Isomers
  
• Chapter 3. The Origins of Bonding and Molecular Properties
  
• Elements, Atoms, and the Periodic Table
  
• Electron Configurations: The Real Organizing Principle
  
• Bonding to Create Molecules
  
• Predicting Properties from Molecular Structure
  
• Chapter 4. A Structural Lexicon of Medicinally Important Chemical Families Found in Plants
  
• Compounds of Primary Metabolism
  
• Secondary Metabolites
  
• Chapter 5. Chemical Behavior and Its Application to Medicinal Molecules
  
• Isolation of Medicinally Active Substances
  
• Analysis and Identification of Medicinal Molecules
  
• Antioxidants and Reactive Oxygen Species: Chemical Reactions Affecting Health
  
• Chapter 6. Drug Delivery and Action
  
• Delivering Drug Molecules
  
• Where Drugs Act: Targets
  
• The Molecular Level of Action
  
• Chapter 7. Case Studies of Selected Plant Drugs
  
• Ayahuasca and the Central Nervous System
  
• Ginkgo and Brain Health
  
• Cancer Treatments from Plants: Interrupting the Cell Cycle
  
• Epilogue
  
• Notes
  
• Glossary
  
• Bibliography
  
• Index
  

O autorze

Bryan Hanson, PhD, is the Julian Professor of Chemistry at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he has taught for seventeen years. His advanced education includes a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from California State University, Los Angeles, and a PhD in chemistry from UCLA with a focus on the total synthesis of natural products. After two years of postdoctoral work with Jim White at Oregon State University, he began teaching at DePauw in 1986. Professor Hanson's research interests are in the areas of medicinal plants, natural products, and chemical ecology. His primary teaching responsibilities are in organic chemistry, biochemistry, and a course intended for nonscientists called “Medicinal Plants for Poets.”