Plants produce > 11,000 different compounds So, why do plants produce all these chemicals?

1. Plants produce > 11,000 different compounds So, why do plants produce all these chemicals? Nature’s Medicine Cabinet Why are plants useful as medicines? • The Random Strategy—Chemicals by Accident • Not excretory, so metabolic compounds accumulate • Evolutionary Strategy—Chemicals for Survival • Protection from herbivory & predation • Chemicals (e.g., compounds) and physical structures (e.g., thorns) “Plants live by their chemical wits. -- Richard Schultes

3. Origins of Agriculture The "fertile crescent" refers to an ancient area of fertile soil and important rivers stretching in an arc from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates. It covers Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The stone age ended with the development of agriculture and the domestication of certain animals

4. Salicin - White Willow (Salix alba)

5. Meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria  (also known as Spiraea ulmaria)

6. Many cultures from the ancient Greeks, Europeans, North American Indians used extract of leaves and bark of willow trees to alleviate muscle pain, headaches, and earaches. Ca 400 BC In Greece Hippocrates gives women willow leaf tea to relieve the pain of childbirth. 1763 Reverend Edward Stone of Chipping Norton near Oxford gives dried willow bark to 50 parishioners suffering rheumatic fever. He describes his findings in a letter to the Royal Society of London. 1823 In Italy the active ingredient is extracted from willow and named salicin. 1832: Gerhardt, a French chemist, experiments with salicin and creates salicylic acid (used as a disinfectant - athletes foot, dandruff). Not taken orally – extremely irritating to stomach. 1838 Salicin also found in the meadowsweet flower by Swiss and German researchers. 1853: Gerhardt neutralized salicylic acid by buffering it with sodium(sodium salicylate) and acetyl chloride, creating acetylsalicylic acid. Gerhardt's product worked but he had no desire to market it and abandoned his discovery. Charles Gerhardt

7. 1897: Felix Hoffmann, at Bayer in Germany, chemically synthesizes a stable form of ASA powder that relieves his father's rheumatism. The compound later becomes the active ingredient in aspirinnamed - "a" from acetyl, "spir" from the spirea plant (which yields salicin) and "in," a common suffix for medications. 1899: Bayer distributes aspirin powder to physicians to give to their patients. Aspirin is soon the number one drug worldwide. 1915: Aspirin becomes available without a prescription. Manufactured in tablet form. 1919: Aspirin ® and Heroin ® were once trademarks belonging to Bayer. After Germany lost World War I, Bayer was forced to give up both trademarks as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. 1974 First evidence of aspirin's effects in preventing heart attacks: Professor Elwood. 1994 - Professor Henk C S Wallenburg of Rotterdam shows that aspirin may help in treating pre-eclampsia in pregnant women (a rapid rise in blood pressure that can lead to seizure, stroke, multiple organ failure and death of the mother and/or baby). 1995 American researchers find evidence that aspirin protects against bowel cancer. 1997 Aspirin is now used or being tested for use in the following conditions:- heart attacks, strokes, pregnancy complications, colon cancer, diabetes, dementia

8. Aspirin is a remarkable painkiller, i.e., an analgesic. Research indicates that painkilling results from the depressant action of aspirin on the central nervous tissue, somehow by reducing mild to moderate pain messages from reaching the brain. A very important use of aspirin is as an antipyretic, i.e., to lower body temperature (fever), via the dissipation of heat through effects on the hypothalamus, increasing sweating. The third major use of aspirin is as an anti-inflammatory agent (reduce swelling), as for victims of arthritis and "rheumatism.” Aspirin is a salicylate. Salicylates are chemicals that occur naturally in many plants. They act as a preservative to prevent rotting and also act as a defendant against harmful bacteria and fungi in the soil. The most widely used medicine in the world, for fever reduction, aches, inflammation, preventing heart attacks, etc. – 500 - 1000 die each year