Chinese herbs for cognitive decline: historical and contemporary applications

China has a long history of recording the actions of herbs and their clinical outcomes. This knowledge was systematically archived for use by subsequent generations of Chinese medical practitioners and is more extensive than any compendia of herbalism developed in Western medicine. Today in China, traditional medicine (TM) is fully integrated into the national health care system with traditional herbal therapies reported to represent 30-50% of the nation's total medication consumption [1]. Statistics from the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China indicated that in 2011 there were 3,268 TM hospitals in China, including 2,795 Chinese medicine hospitals, 273 Western medicine integrated hospitals, and 200 minority nationality medicine hospitals. It was estimated that there were 267,255 registered TM practitioners working in both Chinese and Western medical services [2]. Overall, it has been suggested that about 40% of all health care in China is provided by TM practitioners [3]. TM is also a significant form of health care outside China. In Singapore, for instance, 25.3% of Chinese adults aged 65 years and older had used TM in the previous year [4]. This chapter provides an historical overview of how traditional Chinese herbal medicine has been used to treat cognitive impairment, particularly memory impairment in the aged. This is followed by a brief discussion of contemporary clinical research into the use of herbal formulae and single plant-based medicines in the management of memory and other cognitive disorders. Considering the volume of the traditional and research literature, this discussion cannot be comprehensive; rather, it is intended as an introduction to the field.