In spite of the vast amount of medical data at our disposal, there are limitations and drawbacks of medical care. This is due to the defective medical knowledge - the restricted narrow concepts of human being, illness, etiology and treatment. This has resulted in undue emphasis on physical aspect of human existence ignoring the mental and spiritual aspects in understanding the illness and treating them. There is a) Unnecessary medicalisation while the other methods of treatment remain underused. b) Only symptomatic relief, rather than a cure by removal of the cause, with likelihood of recurrence or syndrome shift. c) Incompleteness of treatment which tackles only the external cause without rectifying the inherent susceptibility leaving the possibility of recurrence. Overspecialization and unnecessary referrals, and non-individualisation of treatment causing avoidable side-effects.

The art of opthalmology was well developed in ancient India and was known as Nimi Tantra. In this paper the author presents the main features of Nimi Tantra an authoritative treatises written by Nimi, a prominent opthalmologist of his time.

The South Indian market sample sources of the drugs Sariva, Prasarani, Dusparsa and Agaru are evaluated; the herbarium specimens and crude drugs for all the plants involved are provided to facilitate identification.

In this article the author reviews research studies on Indian plants with antifertility activity conducted by different Institutes and independent investigators. The available clinical data is also present here.

Kutaja bija, Kudasappalai or Inderjou is an important seed drug in Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani Medicines. The market sample of Madras Crude drug trade has been identified in our laboratory as the seeds of Holarrhena - anti - dysenterica wall of the family Apocynaceae. The morphology, anatomy, fluorescence analysis and chemical studies of the drugs are reported.

Till this date, Modern Medicine has not offered any satisfactory remedy for Jaundice. In contrast, Traditional Medicine and Tribal practices have been rescuing the patients since time immemorial. Presented in this article are some of such remedies rediscovered by the authors in the Dandakaranya area during the Ethno - Botanical Surveys.

Magico - religious rites in treating physical and mental ailments once widespread in ancient India are still prevalent among the tribals / primitive societies. This study shows that it is based on a scientifically sound psychological approach. Magical incantation and other religious rites performed to cure the disease unknowingly affect the mind of patient who in turn subjected to have autosuggestions of getting cured. This generates a kind of psychic energy in him which then helps him to regain the natural capacity of the body to recover from the ailments.

Diabetes mellitus is a common problem in clinical practice. An indigenous herbal drug Arani (Clerodendron phlomidis) was selected for this experimental and clinical study. The experimental study was conducted on albino rats. Arani inhibited the adrenaline induced hyperglycaemia effectively. The alcoholic extractive of Arani produced a well comparable fall in blood sugar to that of tolbutamide. Moreover, Arani caused a significant fall in hyperglycaemia ofalloxan diabetic patients along with clinical improvement. The results were found quite comparable to tolbutamide

The author discusses in this paper to what extent 'the Gita' the most authorative source book of Hindu doctorine and ethics has contributed to the cause of a healthy living of mankind.

The effect of 100 ppm solution of each of kinetin, adenine, uracil and thymine on the vegetative and reproductive growth of Cucumis sativus, phaseolus mungo, Oryza sativus, Raphanus sativus and Lycopersicum esculentum plants were studied. The rate of vegetative growth was found to be more in the Cucumis sativus, Raphanus sativus and Lycopersicum esculentum plants treated with all the chemicals mentioned above over that of the controls. Phaseolus mungo and Oryza sativa plants shows almost the same growth rate with that of the control plants. So far the reproductive phase is concerned, measured as the size of fruit and number of fruit and seed, Cucumis sativus plants produced about same number of fruits in all the treatments but fruit size varied greatly along with the number of seeds in kinetin and adenine treated plants.

In this paper the author presents medicinal or otherwise useful weed species with details of family, vernacular name and its medicinal utility. Information on other general economic importance of medicinal weeds is also described here.