Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book

Title Nature helps-- : how plants and other organisms contribute to solve health problems / Heinz Mehlhorn, editor
Published Heidelberg ; New York : Springer, ©2011

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 372 pages) : illustrations
Series Parasitology research monographs ; v. 1
Parasitology research monographs ; v. 1.
Contents Indigenous traditional medicine: plants for the treatment of diarrhea / Clara Lia Costa Brandelli [and others] -- Efficacies of medicinal plant extracts against blood-sucking parasites / A. Abdul Rahuman -- Natural remedies in the fight against insects / Norbert Becker -- The neem tree story: extracts that really work / Heinz Mehlhorn, Khaled A.S. Al-Rasheid and Fathy Abdel-Ghaffar -- The efficacy of extracts from plants: especially from coconut and onion: against tapeworms, trematodes, and nematodes / Heinz Mehlhorn [and others] -- Curcumin: a natural herb extract with antiparasitic properties / Md. Shahiduzzaman and Arwid Daugschies -- Marine organisms and their prospective use in therapy of human diseases / Sherif S. Ebada and Peter Proksch -- Benefits and failure of imported animals in the fight against pests / Volker Walldorf -- Helminth therapy to treat Crohn's and other autoimmune diseases / Jeff Bolstridge, Bernard Fried, and Aditya Reddy -- Insects help to solve crimes / Jens Amendt -- "Living syringes": use of hematophagous bugs as blood samplers from small and wild animals / André Stadler, Christian Karl Meiser, and Günter A. Schaub -- Xenodiagnosis / Christian Karl Meiser and Günter A. Schaub -- Blowfly strike and maggot therapy: from parasitology to medical treatment / Heike Heuer and Lutz Heuer -- Extracts from fly maggots and fly pupae as a "wound healer" / Heinz Mehlhorn and Falk Gestmann -- Living medication: overview and classification into pharmaceutical law / Heike Heuer, Lutz Heuer, and Valentin Saalfrank
Summary Nature helps ... of course at first itself by developing measures that give bacteria, fungi, plants and animals a chance to be successful in their struggle for life. As a latecomer on Earth, Homo sapiens was gifted with some droplets of the divine spirit of recognition and thus became able to observe, to analyse and recombine skills of other living beings and to use them for his overwhelming career over the last 10,000 years. Of course fungi, plants, animals and even bacteria were primarily used by mankind as food or as lifestyle products such as beer, but soon it became clear that there was much more potential hidden in these organisms and that they could be used for other purposes, too. Extracts of plants and fungi were recognized as powerful remedies, as medicines, as insecticides or acarizides, as repellents against parasites or even as weapons, e.g. when poisonous compounds from frogs or plants were applied to arrowheads. Over the last 110 years the pharmaceutical industry has often simulated nature by analyzing complex organic substances taken from living organisms and then producing by synthesis absolutely pure compounds, which mostly consisted of only one single active substance. These products had the advantage of acting against precisely one target and thus produced fewer possible side effects than the complex plant extracts. However, the more serious side effect was that disease agents could develop resistances to pure medicinal products much more easily. Thus after 70 years of excellent prospects for chemotherapy, some dark clouds appeared and quickly gathered, so that several therapeutic remedies now no longer work. Therefore in many countries - especially in those where the pure chemotherapeutics are too expensive for the poor population - the cry "(Bback to nature" is becoming louder and louder. This has led to an enormous increase of studies that again use natural extracts as remedies in the fight against diseases. The present book summarizes examples of promising aspects in a broad spectrum of applications and shows how extracts derived from bacteria, marine organisms, plants or even animals may help to treat infectious diseases, how such organisms may keep away parasites and pests from the bodies of plants or animals, including humans, and how they can be used directly to aid in diagnosis, promote wound healing and even to help catch criminals. These 15 chapters offer not only basic research on these different fields, but also show how useful and effective products can be developed from research
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
In Springer eBooks
Subject Parasitology.
Medicinal plants.
Ethnopharmacology.
Beneficial insects.
Botany, Medical.
Host-parasite relationships.
Insecticides.
Plant Extracts -- therapeutic use
Host-Parasite Interactions
Insecticides
Invertebrates -- parasitology
Plants, Medicinal
Parasitology
insecticide.
Insecticides
Host-parasite relationships
Botany, Medical
Beneficial insects
Ethnopharmacology
Medicinal plants
Parasitology
Form Electronic book
Author Mehlhorn, Heinz.
LC no. 2011930797
ISBN 9783642193828
364219382X