Historical review of medicinal plants' usage.

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind itself. The connection between man and his search for drugs in nature dates from the far past, of which there is ample evidence from various sources: written documents, preserved monuments, and even original plant medicines. Awareness of medicinal plants usage is a result of the many years of struggles against illnesses due to which man learned to pursue drugs in barks, seeds, fruit bodies, and other parts of the plants.

Extracts from the history and medical properties of garlic.

At the time when antibiotics and other pharmacy products did not exist, a bulb of garlic itself represented a whole pharmacy industry due to the broad spectrum of effects. Most different suppositions involving this herb are mentioned; some of them were so pointless that they disappeared in time, but some of them have remained until the present days. The garlic was given different names that are still in use such as 'Russian penicillin', 'natural antibiotic', 'vegetable viagra', 'plant talisman', 'rustic's theriac', 'snake grass' etc.

Infrared analysis of Macedonian mushroom dietary fibre.

The existing confusion in the terminology and composition of the mushroom dietary fibre literature data induced us to analyze simultaneously the chemical constitution of various dietary fibre isolates obtained from numerous mushroom samples. For that purpose, in 53 kinds of edible Macedonian mushrooms total dietary fibre was isolated by two parallel methods intended for material of plant and animal origin. With the aid of infrared spectroscopy the chemical constitution of the both isolated components was also investigated.