This book is a sequel to the monograph Medicinal Plants in Nigeria, written in 1960 (Oliver, 1960), which was a critical survey of the scattered information available about drug plants found in Nigeria; it suggested a first choice of the plant material which seemed potentially most important, and made suggestions concerning points requiring further scientific investigation (constituents, pharmacology, etc.).

As medical science develops and becomes more organized in the West African countries, the time would seem to have come to reassemble and update our knowledge of the subject and extend it to the whole of tropical West Africa. Furthermore, greater importance is now being attached to the use of locally available medicines as a means of reducing reliance on expensive imported drugs.

Since the first book appeared, a number of papers dealing with the chemical analysis, pharmacology and clinical action of West African plants have been published. Supplementary information now available about individual plants will be included here, and the range of plants considered can thus be more selective. This time an attempt is made to classify the drugs according to their established or possible medical uses, this being the best way of rapidly assessing the medical interest of any particular drug.

The value of a drug will depend on several factors:

1. (1) whether it is the only drug, or one of the few drugs, used in the treatment of a disease;

2. (2) whether the disease in the treatment of which it is used is a common one;

3. […]