Ethnopharmacology

A concerted effort to characterise, assess and exploit the extensive written and oral record of natural products used in pre-modern European medicine has not been made. This is despite the presence in pre-modern European medical texts of natural products known to be effective in vivo (e.g. Artemisia spp. were used to treat malaria in medieval England) or shown to possess antimicrobial and/or immunomodulatory qualities in vitro (e.g. Allium spp., Plantago spp., Urtica spp.). Given rising antimicrobial resistance and a stalled R&D pipeline for compounds to treat and prevent infection, a thorough scientific evaluation of European ethnopharmacology is overdue.

This collection brings together original articles, mini-reviews, and full-length reviews written by researchers from diverse fields including microbiology, chemistry, botany and the history of medicine, along with industry contacts, to reveal the current state of the art of the field and define areas for collaboration, methods development and translational research.