HOW HAS MEDICINE MADE POWERFUL POTIONS FROM PECULIAR PLANTS?

The Anglo-Saxon “watery-elf” disease, thought to be chickenpox, was treated by “mixing herbal lore, magical charms, myth, and religious ideas. The doctor, called the “leech,” was a monk and would get the patient to drink a mix of holy water and “English Herbs,” while apparently repeating the line, “May the Earth destroy thee with all her might.” Like many older cultures, medieval monks believed that the illness was also linked to god and the spirit world.

According to the potions master, Severus Snape, there is a “subtle science and exact art” behind potion making. A potions master specializes in the mixing of various substances to make liquids that can be used to create magical effects in the person that drinks them. Basically, they mess with people’s physiology using a mixture of natural ingredients and magic.

According to J.K. Rowling, it wouldn’t be possible for a muggle to make a magic potion. Even if they were “given a potions book and the right ingredients, there is always some element of wand work necessary.”

Not having a wand hasn’t stopped muggles in their quest to produce concoctions to aid in our health or everyday affairs. From noticing the particular effects of eating something, to experimenting with the consequences of combining natural produce in different amounts, this ingenuity has led to powerful potions with extraordinary effects despite the absence of magic. The question is, how have muggles achieved this?

Nature’s Medicine Cabinet

Nature holds many chemicals and substances that are harmful to humans, but on the flip side, a great deal of known and unknown natural products can benefit us in our everyday affairs. For example, the South African San people use the hoodia plant to suppress appetite when hunting or doing long journeys. Some other common herbs are ginger, feverfew, evening primrose, milk thistle, ginseng, and St. John’s wort.

The reason these herbs are so useful to us comes down to their chemistry. Plants churn out different chemicals to help them function. Primary metabolites such as carbohydrates, vitamins, and proteins are located in all plant cells and are essential to their growth, development, and reproduction. Secondary metabolites, which are derived from primary metabolites but are specific to each plant, are compounds used to attract or defend against other organisms that might pollinate, infect, or try to feed on the plant.

The active ingredients in many of these beneficial compounds of plants can have positive or negative effects on our physiology—effects that druggists often exploit when developing remedies.

There are three types of secondary metabolite that are particularly relevant to medicine: phenolics, terpenoids, and alkaloids, which will be discussed later. Plants produce phenolic compounds to defend themselves against pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms). Salicylic acid, used to reduce acne, is a phenolic compound. A modified version of it is also used to make aspirin. Terpenoids are the biggest group and are primary ingredients in essential oils, which can be toxic to insects while also protecting a plant against bacterial or fungal infection. Some have a potential use against cancer, malaria, inflammation, and various viral and infectious bacterial diseases.

Accumulating Knowledge

The ability to identify the difference between dangerous and beneficial plants is vital to the survival of any life form that eats or interacts with plants. It’s not just about recognizing the plant, it’s also necessary to identify which parts of the plant are edible or safe to handle. For instance, we can eat an asparagus stem, but the fruit of the plant is poisonous, and while we regularly eat the fruit of a tomato plant, its leaves are poisonous. The more notorious poison ivy and water hemlock plants are poisonous to the touch, as is the manchineel tree, which harbors poisonous fruits and sap.

Without particular technologies to help them, indigenous people relied on sensory cues to determine a plant’s potential underlying chemistry. Of course, no method could really provide them with more insight than just trying it and seeing what happens. This knowledge gained through trial and error led to the accumulation of a rich body of knowledge about plants and their effects on the human body. Particular individuals within communities applied this knowledge of plants to create medicines. These herbalists used their skills to prevent, diagnose, improve, or treat physical and mental illness.

The oldest written record of medicinal plant use goes back almost 5,000 years with a Sumerian clay tablet from Nagpur, which references plants like poppy, henbane, and mandrake. There’s also the 3,500-year-old Ebers Papyrus from Egypt featuring hundreds of formulas and medicinal remedies that use ingredients such as garlic, myrrh, aloe vera, and mint. A recent study by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the UK has estimated that there are at least 28,187 plant species in the world currently recorded as being of medicinal use.

Ye Olde Pharmacy

The study of how drugs and medicines affect living systems is called pharmacology, but for millennia it was referred to by the Latin name, materia medica. The term materia medica comes from the title of a book written by the Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD. It was a popular book that was regarded by medical practitioners right through to the middle ages.

At that time, the major medicine practitioners in Europe were called apothecaries. These were basically grocers who specialized in herbs, wines and spices. Through the years they became more involved in the storing and selling of confectionery, perfumes, and drugs which they concocted and dispensed to the public. By the mid-16th century they were mainly dealing in substances for professional use by doctors. They were essentially the early equivalent of our modern community pharmacists.

By the 17th century, plant medicine books known as herbals were valued and well-known, such as John Gerard’s The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, and Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. Culpeper’s book was actually used by J.K. Rowling as a source of inspiration for some of the “witchy” sounding plant names used in Harry Potter such as toadflax, flea-wort, mugwort, and knotgrass.

In 1704, it was legally ruled that apothecaries could prescribe and dispense medicines, and in 1815 the Apothecaries Act was passed in an effort to better regulate the field, marking the start of medical regulation. In England, the society of apothecaries were still making and selling medicinal and pharmaceutical products in the 1920s. Nowadays, the apothecary has evolved into the general practitioner, i.e. your local GP.

The rise of chemical analysis in the early 19th century meant that scientists could now extract and modify the active ingredients from plants, rather than just processing whole parts of plant leaves, roots, or flowers. This permitted the creation of specific remedies that wouldn’t expose patients to the extraneous compounds that can be present in plants.

From then on, European medical practice became dominated by biomedicine, which applies “the principles of the natural sciences; especially biology and biochemistry.” So, how do they get the active ingredients out of plants and into modern drugs?

Drug Development

To obtain the necessary bioactive compounds from the plant, scientists have to extract and isolate them. Starting with a fresh or dried and powdered plant, the required compounds may be soaked (the process of maceration) or filtered slowly (the process of percolation) in water or organic solvents. The solvent affects what compounds can be extracted. For example, tannins and terpenoids can be extracted by water or ethanol whereas anthocyanins can only be extracted by water or methanol solvents. For alkaloids, ethanol or ether is suitable. Whichever process or solvent is used, it’s important to ensure that the active ingredients aren’t adversely affected, lost, or destroyed.

Extraction can often lead to a variety of compounds being obtained. To isolate these compounds, separation and purification techniques are needed, such as chromatography. Chromatography is a method that allows different chemical properties to move at different speeds while passing through a substance. After a time, particular compounds can be found at different positions along the substance.

Obtaining the active ingredient doesn’t necessarily provide the finished drug, though. Active ingredients are often combined with other substances such as sweeteners, preservatives, flavors, lubricants, and vehicles (substances used in liquid or gel mixtures to help carry the active ingredient into the body). These additives, known as excipients, are pharmaceutically inert i.e. they have no particular biological effect on us.

Different ingredients can also be blended together to increase absorption into the body or to target different areas simultaneously. However, it’s important to know how these substances decompose over time to make sure that the drug doesn’t suddenly become toxic when left on the shelf for a while or if exposed to particular temperatures or substances.

Some drugs may also cause undesired side effects or health and safety concerns, leading scientists to synthesize their own modified versions of natural compounds to provide more suitable forms. For example, chloroform and ether were both adapted to be less liver-toxic or flammable. Other modified drugs include heroin and LSD, which are derivatives of morphine and lysergic acid. These drugs can be ineffective or dangerous if taken in the wrong amounts. A safe dosage lies within a therapeutic window, which is the range of dosages in which a drug will be effective without being toxic. The dosage also has to be adjusted based on the size of the person taking it. The particular therapeutic windows are determined experimentally, and more recently, this has included the use of computer models and tests on particular cells of the body before moving on to animal testing followed by human clinical trials.

Powerful Potions from Peculiar Plants

A pharmaceutical agent of plant origin is called a phytopharmaceutical. An example is salicylic acid, found in willow trees. A modified version of the compound, called acetylsalicylic acid is the active ingredient in aspirin. There’s also the aloe-sourced barbaloin, which is an anthraquinone; a class of drug known to have laxative properties. It works by increasing the peristaltic action and reducing water absorption.

By far, the most widely established plant compounds are alkaloids, which are usually bitter tasting and tend to have diverse and powerful physiological effects on humans and other animals. They’re also closely linked to psychoactive effects alongside stimulants and hallucinogens. In 1804, morphine became the first alkaloid to be isolated and crystallized.

In the 1950s, rosy periwinkle was found to contain alkaloid compounds that inhibit cancer cell growth. Their discovery and use helped reduce the mortality rate of people with Hodgkin’s disease or acute lymphocytic leukemia, which were two of the deadliest cancers at the time. Other well-known plant-sourced alkaloids include the stimulants caffeine and nicotine, cocaine from the Coca plant, whose leaves are a local anaesthetic, and quinine, an anti-malarial compound. Poisonous hemlock and strychnine are also considered alkaloids.

The to-be discovered peculiar plants of the world will likely provide us with more remarkable medicinal compounds with powerful effects on our body. The pharmaceutical industry is huge and although companies put a great deal of money and effort into research and development, ultimately it pays off, warranting the search for more pharmaceutical solutions. One increasingly popular method is bioprospecting where new plant species are sought out for their possible novel compounds. Essentially, that’s how peculiar plants have been able to provide medicine with the ingredients to make powerful potions.