[From medicinal plant to phytotherapeutic drug]

The effects of phytotherapy are generally attributed to a specific plant as a whole. However, plants only provide the raw material from which the active ingredients are collected by special procedures. Most of the herbal medicinal preparations as the active ingredients in herbal medicinal products are obtained by extraction using water or organic solvents such as ethanol or methanol. This yields a large variety of preparations with diverse properties. Particular to phytotherapeutic preparations in contrast to synthesized drugs is that they contain a complex mixture of active principles that is difficult to characterize chemically and biologically. Nevertheless, the quality of medicinal preparations from plants can be guaranteed if the raw material, the mode of preparation and the end product are well defined by the manufacturer.