**2.3 Spices**

 Early European medicine markets made use of spices coming from Asia via routes that followed the Silk Road and via crossing at the Isthmus of Suez located between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Limited western trade with India and China occurred as early as 1600 BCE. The conquests of Alexander the Great into Northern India by 325 BCE undoubtedly introduced other European countries to spices as flavoring and medicines.

 The Indonesian archipelago of the Moluccas (or Maluku Islands), commonly referred to as the Spice Islands, were the only or best sources of such spices as cloves, nutmeg, and mace until the 1700s. Arab traders introduced spices harvested in Moluccas to Europeans around the fourth century but sought to keep their sources secret. Monopoly by Arabian caused a big antipathy because of their absurd price of spices. European needs lots of spices to get epidemic away using the medicinal property of spices; therefore, some adventures tried to find a habitat and approached from a sea route which was supported by countries. Consequently, the monopoly by Arabian was broken by the Portuguese after Vasco da Gama's voyage to India around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. The Portuguese strengthened their stranglehold on the spice trade during the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth century, the Dutch took over control of the Moluccas which is known the Spice War. During the period, spices were worth more than their weight in gold. Finally, a nursery tree of spice was smuggled out of Moluccas, hence the Spice War was over, and the spice was cultivated in other places of the world. The occurrence leaded the reducing prices and making the commodity more available. If see the domestic dishes of each country, the diffusion of each spice could be seen as a spice route [3].


#### **Table 2.**  *Actions of alkaloid compounds.*

*Role of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants: Past, Present, and Future DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82497* 
