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QJM Advance Access originally published online on July 8, 2005
QJM 2005 98(9):625-631; doi:10.1093/qjmed/hci094
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Physicians. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Occasional paper

The uses and misuses of orchids in medicine

C.J. Bulpitt

Address correspondence to Prof. C. Bulpitt, Experimental Medicine (Care of the Elderly), Imperial College, Hammersmith Campus, Du Cane Road, London W12 0NN. email: c.bulpitt@imperial.co.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   Introduction
 
We are now aware that medicines need to be tested before being consumed by human beings. Today, this takes the form of experimentation to assess toxicity, and subsequent randomized control trials to assess both efficacy and adverse effects. However, orchid products, the tubers, leaves or flowers, were introduced into medicine with no such testing, and ultimately their use has declined, not through being proven ineffective, but more through lack of evidence and changes in fashion.

This article examines the medicinal uses of orchid plants in the Orient, Europe, the Americas, Australia and Africa, and concludes by examining their usage today.


   China and Japan
 
There is no doubt that the Chinese were the first to cultivate and describe orchids, and they were almost certainly the first to describe orchids for medicinal use. Reinikka reports1 a Chinese legend that Shên-nung described Bletilla striata and a Dendrobium species in his Materia Medica of the 28th century . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Europe
 

   The Americas
 

   Australia
 

   Africa
 

   Other regions
 

   The uses of orchids today
 

   Conclusions
 

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