Herbal medicine makes up an important component of the trend towards alternative medicine and is one of the ancient traditions that use nature's by-products for curing diseases. It embodies the study of botany using plant materials such as seeds, roots, leaves, bark, flowers, and oils for medicinal purposes. It is recognized by WHO as the second largest therapeutic system in use in the world.

This book comprises five units:

Unit I sequentially explores relevant topics like herbs as raw materials, quality assurance in manufacture of herbal medicines and basic principles involved in Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and homeopathy preparations, and standardization of Ayurvedic formulations, such as aristas and asawas, ghutika, churna, lehya and bhasma.
Unit II provides a number of examples, general aspects, market, growth, scope and types of products available in nutraceuticals and study of herbal drug interactions and their possible side effects of hypercium, kava-kava, ginko biloba, ginseng, garlic, pepper and ephedra.
Unit III focuses on herbal cosmetics, herbal excipients and conventional herbal formulations like syrups, mixtures and tablets and novel dosage forms like phytosomes.
Unit IV primarily deals with WHO and ICH guidelines for the assessment of herbal drugs, stability testing of herbal drugs, patenting and regulatory requirements of natural products.
Unit V provides the realistic taste of current art and industrial prespectives of the herbal drugs industry, highlighting present scope and future prospects.