Nature 369, 702 (30 June 1994); doi:10.1038/369702a0

Prospecting for drugs in ancient texts

Bart K. Holland

Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey 07103, USA.

The mass screening of plants in the search for new drugs is vastly expensive and inefficient. It would be cheaper and perhaps more productive to re-examine plant remedies described in ancient and mediaeval texts.

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