This book can be viewed as an aide-memoire to the medicinal plant sciences. Written by experienced scientists and authors in this field, it provides: A comprehensive but compact, fully illustrated, multilingual scientific guide to medicinal and poisonous plants. Very wide coverage, with 360 well-known herbal medicines and poisonous plants, including those used for their mind-altering effects. Introductory chapters, briefly explaining all the important concepts and terms related to medicinal and poisonous plants, as well as the most important analytical techniques. A brief review of the different classes of chemical constituents with examples of well-known compounds and highlighting their occurrence in various herbal products and medicinal plants. A compact guide that is also scientifically accurate, with each species treatment supplied with critical data and chemical structures of the main active compound or marker compound. Superior quality text and photographs and excellent reproduction and printing.
This handy desk-top reference book is likely to become popular amongst healthcare practitioners, pharmacists, doctors and students because it provides quick answers to all the basic questions about medicinal and poisonous plants.

Ben-Erik van Wyk is a professor of Botany and currently holds a National Research Chair in Indigenous Plant Use at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is an authority on plant systematics, ethnobotany and useful plants. Michael Wink is a professor of Pharmaceutical Biology and director at the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology at Heidelberg University, Germany. He is an authority on secondary metabolites of plants and their pharmacological effects.