Coumarins

First identified in 1820s, coumarin is an oxygen heterocycle that is famous for its vanilla-like or freshly-mowed hay fragrance. This parent organic amalgam is generally found in many plants like Tonka beans, sweet clover grass, lavender and licorice. It is also present in fruit-bearing plants like apricots, cherries, strawberries, and cinnamon and dong quai. Artificial production of courmain started since 1820s and has been used in the manufacture of flavorings and perfumes since 1868. Courmain is produced as pesticides by the plants and artificially it is also used to manufacture amalgams like anti-coagulants and rat poison.

When coumarin is fermented it produces dicoumarol that is present in sweet clover. This is a strong anti-coagulant that forms the base of rat poisons which create hemorrhage in the rodents. Since this discovery, in modern-day medicine several off-shoots of coumarin have been used as anti-clotting agents by scientists. Coumarin has a significant resemblance to the construction of vitamin K and this has led to assumptions that the substance functions against prothrombin that leads to blood clotting. This belief has only been strengthened by the fact that vitamin K acts against the effects of coumarin.

It is primarily owing to the occurrence of anticoagulant coumarin and also the haemolytic saponins why plant extracts are never directly injected into the human blood vessels. The good thing about coumarins is that when they reach the digestive system are easily defused to risk-free substances and are easily consumed by the body. Significantly, coumarins are never used as anti-coagulants in herbal medicine for applying them directly may prove to be harmful to the body. On the other hand, coumarin possesses anti-bacterial qualities and is hence used to cure fever in goats.

There are several by-products of coumarins and they include the anti-fungal umbelliferone present in the Umbelliferae or aromatic plant family and in many other exclusive medicines as well as the the aglycone of the precious vascular therapeutic agent aesculin from horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and scopoletin from the lethal nightshade family. Add to this the powerful vasodilators khellin and visnagin from the Middle Eastern plant khellin or Ammi visnaga. Bergapten, obtained from from bergamot oil, is another coumarin by-product that is notoriously applied as a sun screen agent in many suntan lotions these days.