Potential Applications of Euphorbia hirta in Pharmacology

Euphorbia is a genus of plants belonging to the family Euphorbiaceae. Botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus assigned the name Euphorbia to the entire genus in the physician's honor. Euphorbia hirta is a very popular herb amongst practitioners of traditional herb medicine, widely used as a decoction or infusion to treat various ailments including intestinal parasites, diarrhoea, peptic ulcers, heartburn, vomiting, amoebic dysentery, asthma, bronchitis, hay fever, laryngeal spasms, emphysema, coughs, colds, kidney stones, menstrual problems, sterility and venereal diseases. Moreover, the plant is also used to treat affections of the skin. In this chapter we explore those investigations related to their pharmacological activities (see the section 2.2).