Phytochemicals from medicinal plants are receiving ever greater attention in the scientific
literature in medicine and in the world economy in general. For example the global value of
plant-derived pharmaceuticals will reach $500 billion in the year 2000 in the OECD countries.
In the developing countries over-the-counter remedies and ethical phytomedicines which are
standardized toxicologically and clinically defined crude drugs are seen as a promising low
cost alternatives in primary health care. The field also has benefited greatly in recent years
from the interaction of the study of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and the application
of modem phytochemical analysis and biological activity studies to medicinal plants. The papers
on this topic assembled in the present volume were presented at the annual meeting of the
Phytochemical Society of North America held in Mexico City August 15-19 1994. This meeting
location was chosen at the time of entry of Mexico into the North American Free Trade Agreement
as another way to celebrate the closer ties between Mexico the United States and Canada. The
meeting site was the historic Calinda Geneve Hotel in Mexico City a most appropriate site to
host a group of phytochemists since it was the address of Russel Marker. Marker lived at the
hotel and his famous papers on steroidal saponins from Dioscorea composita which launched the
birth control pill bear the address of the hotel.
