This book represents an unsurpassed resource in the English language on Indian medicines, the plants that produce them and the currently known organic compounds that occur therein. It is beautifully organized and written in an admirably succinct and clear style. But beyond that, it is visually beautiful because of the outstanding color photographs of each plant and the extreme care that has been taken with the layout, chemical formulae and printing. It is an elegant and esthetically pleasing volume from page one to the end, page 500.
Professor Sukh Dev, one of the giants in Indian chemistry of the twentieth century, deserves much credit for the prodigious effort and high scholarship that went into the creation of this admirable work. He has fused the works of Ayurvedic folk medicine with modern pharmacology, botany and chemistry in a singularly effective way.
I expect that this book will prove to be of value for a long time and that it may sow the seeds for future advances in medicinal science. I am reminded of Professor Sukh Devs last major work, a two-volume opus on the triterpene class of complex naturally occurring organic molecules which towers over every other book in the field, as it will for a long time.
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