Phytomedicine

Phytomedicine is the science of illness and damage to plants, the causes thereof, their manifestations, their development, their dissemination, methods for maintaining plant health and also measures used to control plant diseases and their causes. The Deutsche Phytomedizinische Gesellschaft (German Phytomedicine Society) is the German association of Phytomedicine practitioners.

The term "phytomedicine" originates from the members of the Verbandes Deutscher Pflanzenärzte (1928–1939), (German Plant Physicians Society), particularly Otto Appel, known as the Organiser of German Plant Protection. Appel made early attempts to summarise the terminology of Phyto-Medicine or Plant Medicine. He requested that those who taught in this area should represent phyto-medicine, as is the case in the fields of human and veterinary medicine.

Appel wrote in 1923: Just as one calls a doctor to a sick person or animal, one should also be able in the future to call on the advice of a plant doctor when plant sickness occurs. This doctor should be capable of diagnosing the disease and, in the case of the most important and common diseases, to prescribe a cure or means of preventing the disease spreading. He should ….. also be concerned with prevention, much as hygiene is in human medicine.

During his long tenure as Director of the Biologischen Reichsanstalt für Land- und Forstwirtschaft (Imperial Institute of Agriculture and Forestry, as it was known from 1919), Appel used this concept as a basis for the development of this organization and thus personally shaped its scientific and institution history. (Sucker, 1998).

The term phytomedicine is epistemologically a branch of Phytopathologie and Plant Protection or the constituent disciplines. [4] As a "uniting science" (Mühle, 1967) the term "phytomedicine" has the same relevance as the terms "human medicine" and "veterinary medicine" in their respective fields, specifically indicating the inseparable nature of theory and practice. The significance of the term “phytomedicine” results from the differentiation (Stichweh, 1982) under the general term "Areas of phytopathology and plant protection". [5] i.e. their separation into several sub-disciplines since the end of the 19th century. The result of this was that for a time the specific unity of theory and practice, necessary in applied science, lost in importance. This development led to "the demands for a summary and re-organisation in scientific terms to become louder." [6] This demand met the approval of the scientists of the Biologischen Reichsanstalt, for instance that of the Entomologist and founder of the Conservation Society, Fr. Zacher, O. Appel in 1923, and in 1937 the phytopathologist H. Braun. The historical recognition of those above comprises their contribution to the scientific necessity for a unification of the differentiated areas of "phytopathology" and "plant protection" as an essential basis for the further development of their area of expertise, and their contribution to finding a solution.

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