Abstract
The importance of the rainforest as a source of botanical drugs is discussed. The future of botanical medicines is focused on pure compounds and plant extracts. Further efforts need to be devoted to isolation of active components with structural descriptions. The author states that only 90,000 natural compounds have been so studied representing only 40% of total possible new drugs while several million synthetics comprise the remaining 60%. It is estimated that 35,000 to 50,000 plant species are found in the Amazon rainforest hence it is a valuable source of new compounds.