Plants traditionally used in the Czech Republic for their antimicrobial properties: An overview and comparison with scientific studies

The use of plants in medicine and folk medicine is probably as old as humanity itself. Medicinal plants have accompanied human throughout the stages of its historical development and herbs were the first medicines which human met. Healing herbs were the most accessible and often only therapeutic agent. In the first part of the thesis, the information about the history of medicinal plants, natural method of therapy, phytotherapy, biologically active substances of plant and about antimicrobial agents are summarized. Some specific cases of plants with antimicrobial activity are also listed. The second part presents data obtained by comparing data on the traditional use of plants for their antimicrobial activity in folk medicine to scientific data available from the Web of Science database. The traditional use of plants was investigated according to data from the most comprehensive Czech herbarium of medicinal plants from Jiří Janča and Josef Antonín Zentrich. From a total of 363 plants, 207 species whith presumable antimicrobial activity were selected from the herbarium,. For these plants were subsequently searched and evaluated all records from scientific databases mentioning their antimicrobial activity.Sbsequently, all records on these species mentioning their antimicrobial activity were searched on the scientific database and evaluated. After the comparison and evaluation of the data gathered about the initial 207 species, 31 plants, which should exhibit antimicrobial effects according to the aforementioned herbals but scientific records are confirmed unsatisfactorily or not at all, were selected. This group of plants can serve as the basis for future research to confirm or refute their antimicrobial activity