Pharmacognosy deals with studying a drug, be it medicament or poison. Drugs are a means taken from the world around us, through which man can preserve and preserve health. The experience regarding the use of medicinal drugs has grown independently of populations, cultures and societies: even if with different scientific-religious connotations, we could define the vegetable source or the drug as the vehicle of health mediated by nature. Different cultures, with different evolutions and even geographically distant, instinctively resorted to the same sources to treat the same type of disorder or pathology, so there was a sort of co-evolution of the concept of medicine. Every society has developed its own herbal medicine and ethnomedicine, or the medicine acquired instinctively from a certain ethnic group. Several ethnomedicines have arisen, which have been more or less maintained over time; even today some of them are very successful, like Ayurvedic medicine . At present, ethnomedicines are considered complementary medicines to the hippocatric one: Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine, that is medicine from western areas. Fitorerapia (drug therapy), born of the knowledge of different cultures, bringing together all aspects, is also considered a complementary medicine to traditional medicine. There are many other therapeutic strategies, developed in different socio-cultural contexts, which use the vegetable source as a medicine to research health, such as the Japanese Kampo medicine and the homeopathic one; all, however, have an instinctive origin.
Ippocatre was a scholar of natural sciences, a botanist and even a doctor; he has structured the foundations of today's medicine, which can be summarized in the famous Latin phrase " CONTRARIA CONTRARIIS CURANTUR "; the disease, therefore, must be treated with a therapeutic agent that counteracts it, be it a drug or a drug. Many ethnomedicines and the same herbal medicine are also used in this concept. Our concept of "care" embraces the concept of health, using different therapeutic strategies.
The homeopathic strategy is completely opposed to the hippocatric one; this therapeutic philosophy, born in France in the 1800s thanks to Hahnemann, states that: " SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR ", similar treats the like; despite the apparent contradiction, there is clinical evidence to prove the validity of this strategy. Homeopathic medicine aims to use a natural source to arouse in the subject a symptomatology similar to that which he would perceive if he were sick. The homeopathic product is, in fact, a vegetable extract diluted many times; for this reason, the effectiveness of homeopathic therapy is still much discussed. The concept is in stark contrast to the therapy strategy of Hippocrates which presupposes, instead, the assumption of an active principle, concentrated and undiluted, responsible for a symptomatology opposite to that which the patient would have if he were sick.
All the different medicines use natural sources; for this reason we find numerous vegetable sources in pharmacies, drugstores and herbalists. Every year, approximately 500 vegetable sources enter and leave the commercial establishments, which, before being put on the market, must undergo a quality and safety check. The market for natural sources is so vast because the health culture of public opinion requires it; and today this trend is constantly growing.
