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https://www.academia.edu/34457920/Chapter_2_Review_of_Related_Literature

Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

This chapter presents the various literature and studies which

have added further knowledge on the study.

Local Literature

In the article of A.C. SAS entitled “Plants and Health”, he stated

thatman is wholly dependent upon plants. They need the plant kingdom

for their very existence. The foods that he eats, the oxygen that he

breathes, the clothes that he wears, the home in which he is sheltered,

all come directly or indirectly from the vegetable kingdom.

It was in His wise providenceGod endowed nature with such rich

and varied vegetation. This provides not only food for man but also the

means to preserve health and to recover from sickness. Man should avail

himself more extensively of the benefits which the Creator placed in the

vegetable kingdom.1

The early 90's seemed hopeful for the merging of western and

alternative medicine in the Philippines. There was a burgeoning global

movement towards alternative therapies, a new-age allure for "natural"

remedies; and in the Philippines, the beginnings of herbal medicinal

research & development. In 1992, during the term of Juan Flavier as

Secretary of Health, a brochure of 10 medicinal plants (akapulko,

ampalaya, bawang, bayabas, lagundi, niyog-niyogan, pansit-pansitan,

sambong, tsaang-gubat, yerba buena) for common health problems was

published and commercial production was pursued. In 1997, the TAMA

(Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act) was passed, providing a

legitimizing boost to the alternative medicine movement in the

Philippines.2

Yet the nature has many plants to offer to cure various diseases,

there came the new inventions of different scientists and as time passed

healing plants are replaced by new sets of medicinal drugs that effects

easily without passing through many processes unlike with the use of

plants.

Just like what Mr.Benigno have stated in his journal entitled

“The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in a

conventionally western-oriented medical practice in the Philippines.”,

“There is now anongoing romance between the West and the East as

regards medicine and healthcare. It can be said that it is now possible in

medicine to offer a more holistic approach with as many options as

acceptable when both forms of treatment are combined. There is great

promise when one looks back. in the early beginnings of western

medicine, reliance on the use of medicinal herbs were the forbears from

which the active form of drugs has been isolated and formulated.” 3

But as of the situation here in the Philippines affording

prescription drugs is not that easy especially for those in the rural area

that’s why they prefer using alternative medicine without assurance if it

would really can cure their diseases.

Availability of medicines is dependent on the presence of doctors

to prescribe drugs and the existence of drugstores or pharmacies in the

area. Most government health professionals practice in urban areas,

especially in NCR and Region III. As private physicians charge for their

services, long queues for government physicians in the public health

facilities are often the norm.4

Local Studies

A study of alternative medicine in the Philippines is, inevitably, a

study of the origins of its people and amalgam of cultures and influences:

Centuries of Spanish colonial rule and the indelible consequences of it

religion, hundreds of years trade with China and assimilation of its

healing arts, tribal and provincial diversities with its profusion of folklore

and mythologies, all redounding into the Filipino’s easy disposition for

superstitions and the allure for the esoteric, mystical, and fringe.5

The early 90’s seemed hopeful for the merging of western and

alternative medicine in the Philippines. There was a burgeoning global

movement towards alternative therapies, a new age allure for natural

remedies and in the Philippines, the beginning of herbal medicinal

research & development. In 1992, during the term of Juan Flavier as

secretary of Health, a brochure of 10 medicinal plants(akapulko,

ampalaya, bawang, bayabas, lagundi, niyog-niyogan pansit-pansitan,

sambog, tsaang-gubat, yerba Buena) for common health problems was

published and commercial production was pursued. In 1997, the

TAMA(Traditional and Alternative Medicinal Act) was passed, providing a

legitimizing boost to the alternative medicine movement in the

Philippines.6

Foreign Literature

The number of drugs used today is vast and is steadily increasing

as new drugs are developed and new uses are found for old drugs.

Several drugs still used by doctors, such as the active principle in

aspirin, have been used clinically for many hundreds of years. Many

drugs, including digitalis, cocaine, morphine, and others, are of plant

origin. At first, drugs were often rather crude, and pharmacognosy, the

branch of pharmacology that deals with the physical characteristics of

crude drugs came to focus on the study of the botanical sources of

drugs. Drugs may also be obtained from animal or mineral sources. Most

modern drugs, however, are synthetic. Other naturally occurring drugs,

such as many of the penicillins, are produced by partial chemical

synthesis from some simpler biological compound.7

Medicating Modern America examines the meanings behind this

pharmaceutical revolution through the interconnected histories of eight

of the most influential and important drugs: antibiotics, mood stabilizers,

hormone replacement therapy, oral contraceptives, tranquilizers,

stimulants, statins, and Viagra. All of these drugs have been popular,

profitable, influential, and controversial, and the authors take a

historical approach to studying their development, prescription, and

consumption. This perspective locates the histories of prescription

medicines in specific cultural contexts while revealing the extent to

which contemporary debates about pharmaceutical drugs echo concerns

voiced by Americans in the past.8

Generic drugs are now familiar objects in clinics, drugstores, and

households around the world. We like to think of these tablets, capsules,

patches, and ointments as interchangeable with their brand-name

counterparts: why pay more for the same? And yet they are not quite the

same. They differ in price, in place of origin, in color, shape, and size, in

the dyes, binders, fillers, and coatings used, and in a host of other ways.

Claims of generic equivalence, as physician-historian Jeremy Greene

reveals in this gripping narrative, are never based on being identical to

the original drug in all respects, but in being the same in all ways that

matter.9

The main purpose of the use of drugs is to cure disease or correct

a disorder. Chemotherapeutic drugs, such as the antibiotics, fight

infection by acting directly on disease-causing invading organisms, either

immobilizing or killing them. Some chemotherapeutic drugs are also

used to suppress or prevent infection.10

 For MDs, Hippocrates is the “father of medicine” primarily because

of his introduction of a consistently naturalistic orientation to thinking

about disease and cure, banishing gods and demons as agents of

sickness and recovery. For alternative medicine’s heretics, Hippocrates

has been more important for his advocacy of certain other principles,

principles that have persisted in alternative medical philosophy to the

present. These principles are evident in particularly concise form in

another alternative medicine cartoon, this one dating from the early

1800s. 11

The objective of medicine is to address people's unavoidable needs

for emotional and physical healing. The discipline has evolved over

millennia by drawing on the religious beliefs and social structures of

numerous indigenous peoples, by exploiting natural products in their

environments, and more recently by developing and validating

therapeutic and preventive approaches using the scientific method.

Public health and medical practices have now advanced to a point at

which people can anticipate—and even feel entitled to—lives that are

longer and of better quality than ever before in human history.12

Foreign Studies

In Traditional Medicines in Africa: An Appraisal of Ten Potent

African Medicinal Plants published by M. FawziMahomoodally it says

that African traditional medicine is the oldest, and perhaps the most

assorted, of all therapeutic systems. Africa is considered to be the cradle

of mankind with a rich biological and cultural diversity marked by

regional differences in healing practices.13 African traditional medicine in

its varied forms is holistic involving both the body and the mind. The

traditional healer typically diagnoses and treats the psychological basis

of an illness before prescribing medicines, particularly medicinal plants

to treat the symptoms.14 The sustained interest in traditional medicine in

the African healthcare system can be justified by two major reasons. The

first one is inadequate access to allopathic medicines and western forms

of treatments, whereby the majority of people in Africa cannot afford

access to modern medical care either because it is too costly or because

there are no medical service providers. Second, there is a lack of effective

modern medical treatment for some ailments such as malaria and/or

HIV/AIDS, which, although global in distribution, disproportionately

affect Africa more than other areas in the world.

Nonetheless, the documentation of medicinal uses of African plants and

traditional systems is becoming a pressing need because of the rapid loss

of the natural habitats of some of these plants due to anthropogenic

activities and also due to an erosion of valuable traditional knowledge. It

has been reported that Africa has some 216 million hectares of forest,

but the African continent is also notorious to have one of the highest

rates of deforestation in the world, with a calculated loss through

deforestation of 1% per minimum.15 Interestingly, the continent also has

the highest rate of endemism, with the Republic of Madagascar topping

the list by 82%, and it is worth to emphasize that Africa already

contributes nearly 25% of the world trade in biodiversity. Nonetheless,

the paradox is that in spite of this huge potential and diversity, the

African continent has only few drugs commercialized globally.16

 Notes
1 A.C SAS, “Plants and Health”.The Use of Plants.Pg. 24 1990.

2Stuart Dr. Godofredo Jr.U., “Philippine Alternative Medicine

3 Agbayani, Benigno Sr F. . The use of complementary and

alternative medicine (CAM) in a conventionally western-oriented

medical practice in the Philippines.

4 Romualdez A, dela Rosa J, FlavierJ, Quimbo S, Hartigan-Go,Lagrada

L,David L,. “The Philippines Health System Review”, 2011. pg 95.

5 Stuart Jr, G.(2003). Philippine Alternative Medicine. Retrieved

from: http://www.stuartxchange.com/AltMedIntro.html

6 Stuart Jr, G.(2003). Philippine Alternative Medicine. Retrieved

from: http://www.stuartxchange.com/Herbal.html

7 McDannald, Alexander. The Encyclopedia Americana Volume 9.

Americana Corporation, 1945. pg 404. Print.

8 Tone, Andrea and Watkins, Elizabeth. Medicating Modern

America: Prescription Drugs in History. New York University Press,

2007. Print.

9 Greene, Jeremy. The Unbranding of Modern Medicine. John

Hopkins University Press, 2014. Print.

10 McDannald, Alexander. The Encyclopedia Americana Volume 9.

Americana Corporation, 1945. pg 404 Print.

11 Whorton, James. Nature Cures: The History of Alternative

Medicine in America. Oxford University Press, 2004. pg 3. Print.

12 Debas, Laxminarayan, and Stephen E. Straus. Disease Control

Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition. New York: Oxfore

University Press, 2006. Print.

13 Gurib-Fakim, A. Medicinal Plants: Traditions of Yesterday and

Drugs of Tomorrow. Molecular Aspects of Medicine, vol. 27, no.1,

pp. 1-93, 2006.

14 Aone Mokaila, 2001

15 Gurib-Fakin, A. and Mahomoodally, M. F. African Flora as

Potential Sources of Medicinal Plants: Towards the Chemotherapy

of Major Parasitic and Othe Infectious Diseases-a review. Jordan

Journal of Biological Sciences, vol. 6, pp. 77-84, 2013

16 Atawodi, S. E. Antioxidant Potential of African Medicinal Plants.

African Journal of Biotechnology, vol. 4, no.2, pp. 128-133, 2005.