ABSTRACT
The poisonous Chinese materia medica (CMM) has been used since the ancient period as an important part of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, the drug administration and quality control of poisonous CMM are the key issues which could affect drugs safety and play a crucial role with the modernization of TCM. This paper has reviewed the origins of drugs, using, processing methods, and quality control of poisonous CMM. The practical application in researching of poisonous CMM has also been analyzed, as well as its management problems. The restraints on the poisonous CMM development as well as the medicine quality control and management issues have been expounded, in order to provide the improvements of applying the poisonous CMM.
ABSTRACT
Aromatic traditional Chinese medicines have a long history in China, with wide varieties. Volatile oils are active ingredients extracted from aromatic herbal medicines, which usually contain tens or hundreds of ingredients, with many biological activities. Therefore, volatile oils are often used in combined prescriptions and made into various efficient preparations for oral administration or external use. Based on the sources from the database of Newly Edited National Chinese Traditional Patent Medicines (the second edition), the author selected 266 Chinese patent medicines containing volatile oils in this paper, and then established an information sheet covering such items as name, dosage, dosage form, specification and usage, and main functions. Subsequently, on the basis of the multidisciplinary knowledge of pharmaceutics, traditional Chinese pharmacology and basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine, efforts were also made in the statistics of the dosage form and usage, variety of volatile oils and main functions, as well as the status analysis on volatile oils in terms of the dosage form development, prescription development, drug instruction and quality control, in order to lay a foundation for the further exploration of the market development situations of volatile oils and the future development orientation.