Let us take up two issues which have been worrying all persons interested in medicinal plants. The first is deforestation which is destroying our medicinal plants. This is constantly being reported in our Newspapers. It is, for example, difficult to get gum guggal, and it is practically impossible to get genuine chirata or Andrographis paniculata and the same is true for many plants. The second problem is that many of our remedies are home remedies or grandmother's remedies which are becoming extinct.
Many Ayurvedic physicians pass on the knowledge only to their written information.
Sometimes even valuable manuscripts are destroyed or sold off to the kabadiwala. This type of information should be collected and compiled so that it is not lost to posterity. Western countries have become, once again, very intersted in medicinal plants because two recent discoveries have fired their imagination. Neem leaves have been used for generations in India to keep off insects from warm clothes packed up during the summer season or on grain stored in containers. In spite of our possessing this traditional knowledge it was the American scientists who have successfully isolated from neem what is today widely accepted as the most powerful anti-insect substance yet discovered.