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Received Oct 18, 2017; Revised Jan 10, 2018; Accepted Feb 6, 2018
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1. Background to the Study
Diseases have afflicted man for ages but humans always make effort to remedy the situation in order to regain a life disturbed by these ailments. The earliest form of healing substances had been herbal medicines, but with the advent of civilization which had led to better scientific understanding of diseases and medications, orthodox medicines have become the main and well recognized products for the management of diseases in modern health systems [1, 2]. According to Mahomoodally (2013), herbal medicines (HM) include herbs, herbal materials, herbal preparations, and finished products that contain parts of plants or other plant materials as active ingredients [3]. Orthodox medicines (OM) or drugs on the other hand are chemically pure substances which when administered into the body produce pharmacological effects which may consequently lead to alleviation of the disease or help in the diagnosis or prevention of the disorder [4]. Many current orthodox drugs have their origin from herbal medicines, but the main difference between the two is that the herbal drugs contain a large number of compounds, rather than a single pharmacologically active substance; hence components of both herbal and orthodox medicines may act on one another to moderate, oppose, or enhance an effect [5, 6]. It would have been expected that orthodox medicine should be an overwhelming favoured choice of treatment of diseases since it is a more refined and scientifically studied remedy. Herbal medicines however also continue to be well patronized in both developing and developed countries of the world. According to the World Health Organization (2002), despite the introduction of orthodox medicine by the Europeans who colonized Africa, up to 80% of Africans still use traditional medicines, especially herbal medicine for their primary healthcare needs [7]. Patronage of herbal products has also seen an increase even in developed countries such that approximately 20% of people in the United States of America use herbal products for various health reasons [8]. Despite the high patronage of herbal medicines all over the world,...