Book offers herbal cures for ailments

April 3: At a time when Chennai has been flooded with spurious medicines, a city college has come out with a book that can help people identify and preserve medicinal plants found in the metropolis.Medicinal Plants - Profiles and Values, published by the department of botany, DG Vaishnav College, is a first of its kind.“We have profiled more than 80 medicinal plants in this book. The uniqueness of these herbs is that they are all safe and do not have any documented adverse reaction,” said S. Narasimhan, principal, DG Vaishnav College.T. Thirunarayanan, secretary, Centre For Traditional Medicines and Research, who led the team that edited the book, said there are many medicinal plantsin the city and surrounding areas, but they selected only plants which were useful in the treatment of common ailments.“This book will hopefully reduce the need to go to the doctor with commoncold, cough, flu or headache,” said Dr Thirunarayanan.