Ayurveda recommends use of whole plant not alkaloids or active principles

Nowadays, isolation of active principles or alkaloids from the plants is seeking more attraction to the researchers and Scientists to manufacture various kinds of medicines based on a single active principle or molecule mainly in the Allopathic System of Medicine. Indigenous drugs are now being tested in various chemical laboratories, however, the Ayurveda recommends utilization of the whole plant as drugs not single isolated molecules or active principle constituents. 

 Much work had already been done to compare the properties of the Indigenous drugs by using as whole as well as isolated single molecules and observed that the whole drugs were found more effective in comparison to the isolated molecules.

 According to many practical observations it is seen that- 

 " It is impossible to obtain any information about the medical properties of drugs by carrying on researchers in chemical laboratories. Whether a botanical or chemical drug is harmful to the system can be conclusively proved only if the drug is administered in its natural state - a state in which its action has been described in Ayurvedic work: research regarding them should be carried on primarily in human hospitals or at the most in biological laboratories." 

 The following quotes published in the current Science in 1946 also supporting that -

  " Looking at the matter from chemical point of view one is struck by the large number and variety of natural products employed successfully as curative materials by the Ayurvedic practitioners as a result of the immensity of valuable therapeutic knowledge of these accumulated by centuries of observations. It has been the practice among advocates of Indigenous drugs for use in the western system of medicine to extract some of these drugs for what is known as active principles with a view to employing the latter for the same purposes as the crude drug. Ths practice which has currency for some time soon proved dangerous, as it was frequently found that, the extracted principles very often had not even a fraction of the efficacy of the crude drug. As has been recently shown by Miss Irani in the case of Kuruchi seeds, the constituents of a  crude drug responsible for its curative action may be in a different and much more complex stage of combination than the substances usually isolated from them in the form of the so-called active principles. This question, therefore, of the substitution of Ayurvedic drugs by their so-called active principles may be fraught with dangerous consequences."

From the above, it is very much clear that the Ayurvedic System Of Medicines recommends utilizing whole drugs for the preparation of medicines to get more and effective therapeutic properties.

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