The uses and misuses of orchids in medicine.
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.

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 Shen-nung described Bletilla striata and a Dendrobium species in his Materia Medica of the 28th century BC. The earliest Middle East report of plant remedies is in a 4000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet,2 but I do not know if this included any orchids. Shen-nung's herbal ‘cures’ were probably published many times, but were certainly published in 1600 in the Pun-tsae , a pharmacopoeia.2–4 Confucius (551–479 BC) called the orchid ( lan in Chinese) the ‘King of Fragrant Plants’, and Chinese writings indicated that they stood for many things: ‘retirement, friendship, perfection, numerous progeny, all things feminine, noble and elegant’1—and some of these themes were echoed in Europe.

The Chinese were also the first to write books devoted to orchids. In 1233, Chao Shih-K![Graphic][1] ng wrote Chin Chan Lan P'u , and described 20 species and how to grow them.3 In 1247, Wang Kuei-hsueh wrote his Treatise on Chinese orchids , and described 37 species. The first Western volumes dedicated to orchids did …

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