Abstract
The archives of Flora Medicinal, an ancient pharmaceutical laboratory that supported ethnomedical research in Brazil for more than 30 years, were searched for plants with antimalarial use. Forty plant species indicated to treat malaria were described by Dr. J. Monteiro da Silva (Flora Medicinal leader) and his co-workers. Eight species, Bathysa cuspidata, Cosmos sulphureus, Cecropia hololeuca, Erisma calcaratum, Gomphrena arborescens, Musa paradisiaca, Ocotea odorifera, and Pradosia lactescens, are related as antimalarial for the first time in ethnobotanical studies. Some species, including Mikania glomerata, Melampodium divaricatum, Galipea multiflora, Aspidosperma polyneuron, and Coutarea hexandra, were reported to have activity in malaria patients under clinical observation. In the information obtained, also, there were many details about the appropriate indication of each plant. For example, some plants are indicated to increase others' potency. There are also plants that are traditionally employed for specific symptoms or conditions that often accompany malaria, such as weakness, renal failure or cerebral malaria. Many plants that have been considered to lack activity against malaria due to absence of in vitro activity against Plasmodium can have other mechanisms of action. Thus researchers should observe ethnomedical information before deciding which kind of screening should be used in the search of antimalarial drugs.
Highlights
Flora Medicinal is an ancient and small pharmaceutical laboratory established, in early 1915, by Mr José Monteiro da Silva, a Medical Doctor in Rio de Janeiro
During the '30 s and '40 s, the Revista da Flora Medicinal was translated to French and republished by the Institut Pasteur, in Paris, which allowed some of his findings to be used by the international pharmaceutical industry
All documents, including books, hand notes, unpublished studies and the issues of Revista da Flora Medicinal, belonging to the library of Mr Monteiro da Silva, were examined for information about botanical therapies and plant species used for malaria
Summary
Flora Medicinal is an ancient and small pharmaceutical laboratory established, in early 1915, by Mr José Monteiro da Silva, a Medical Doctor in Rio de Janeiro. For more than 40 years Mr Monteiro da Silva had organized a group of technicians and scientists who made a great number of excursions into Brazilian rainforest, collecting plant specimens and information He had edited the Revista da Flora Medicinal, a scientific paper in which he described his discoveries, a considerable part of his research remains unpublished. During the '30 s and '40 s, the Revista da Flora Medicinal was translated to French and republished by the Institut Pasteur, in Paris, which allowed some of his findings to be used by the international pharmaceutical industry During his activities, Mr Monteiro da Silva and his team described more than 200 new medicinal plants from this region. Its incidence is again growing worldwide, and Plasmodium falciparum is getting more resistant to the usual antimalarial (page number not for citation purposes)
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