Pharmacognosy I

This course unit provides details on taxonomic features of plants that contain medicines, animal parts and minerals having medicinal values. It provides the student will practical skills and techniques of medicinal plant identification, characterisation, propagation and herbarium preparation. 

COURSE JUSTIFICATION

This course introduces the student to key medicinal plant families on the basis of their diagnostic characteristics and active principles. It helps students to relate medicines and their source from nature.

AIM OF THE COURSE

This course introduces to the student the basic concepts and principles involved in the study of medicinal substances of plant, animal and mineral origin. It provides an understanding of the history, development and production of these substances. It covers important distinguishing features of the sources including taxonomic features as applied to plants. A systematic analysis of area based ranking of key medicinal and poisonous plants will be done to help instill curiosity in the students on natural products research and formulation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of the course unit, the student should be able to do the following; 

1. Define pharmacognosy, and the common terms and concepts used in pharmacognosy.
   
2. State the sources and general methods of obtaining drugs. 
   
3. Identify taxonomic and other distinguishing features of plants from which drugs may be derived
   
4. Collection and identification of local medicinal plants, their diagnostic anatomical characteristics and the relevant species. 
   
5. Describe plant taxonomy, anatomy and morphology.
   
6. Describe drugs as products of secondary metabolic processes in plants. 
   
7. Preparation of herbarium specimens
   
8. Preparation of extraction material for polar and nonpolar solvents
   
9. Comparison of concoction procedures in herbal medicine
   
10. Preparation of a herbarium