Garcia de Orta (1501–1568), Leonhard Rauwolf (1535–1596), Ram Nath Chopra (1882–2002), Rustom Jal Vakil (1911–1974)
The Indian snakeroot plant, Rauwolfia serpentina, has an ancient history in traditional Ayurvedic medicine. Hindu texts dating from approximately 500 BCE indicated rauwolfia (termed Sarpaghanda in Sanskrit) for the treatment of a host of disparate medical conditions, including epilepsy, insomnia, mental disorders, hypertension (high blood pressure), dysentery, and worm infestation. It is also used as an antidote for snake and insect bites, to reduce fever, and to stimulate contractions of the uterus. Mahatma Gandhi was said to have used it to achieve a state of calm contemplation. Some of these conditions benefited from rauwolfia treatment; others did not; and a few (epilepsy, diarrhea) actually worsened.
Garcia de Orta, a Portuguese physician who moved to India in 1534 to escape the Inquisition, first introduced rauwolfia to Western physicians. He was the earliest European to describe, in a 1563 book, tropical diseases (most notably cholera), as well as Indian spices and herbal remedies. Rauwolfia (also spelled “rauvolfia”) was named in honor of Leonhard Rauwolf, a physician and botanist who, after a three-year trip to the Near East and Asia, returned to his native Germany with samples and extensive descriptions of plants used for medicinal purposes.
The earliest scholarly reports of powdered rauwolfia root for mental illness and hypertension appeared in Indian journals during the 1930s but attracted little outside attention. Thereafter, rauwolfia was intensively researched by two of India’s most distinguished medical scientists—Ram Nath Chopra and Rustom Jal Vakil, the fathers of Indian pharmacology and clinical pharmacology, respectively.
Chopra was the first to study, over many years, the effects of the crude extract in animals. He described its calming effects on blood pressure, but not until a 1949 paper by Rustom Jal Vakil in the British Heart Journal described its antihypertensive effects did Western medicine take note. Rauwolfia’s active component, reserpine, was isolated in 1952. Reserpine was also found to possess antischizophrenic properties, but the far more effective chlorpromazine, made available at the same time, upstaged it.
SEE ALSO Chlorpromazine (1952), Reserpine (1952).
Lord Dhanvantari, a Hindu avatar (deity incarnation) of healthcare and the founder of Ayurveda, developed medical treatments utilizing herbs, including snakeroot (rauwolfia). He is typically depicted with four hands, holding medicinal herbs in one hand and a pot containing the nectar of immortality in another.