What is Ayurvedic medicines?

Practiced in India for more than 5,000 years, Ayurvedic tradition holds that illness is a state of imbalance among the body's systems that can be detected through such diagnostic procedures as reading the pulse and observing the tongue. Nutrition, medicine, counseling, massage, natural medications, meditation, and other modalities are used to address a broad spectrum of ailments. A detailed account on this system of medicine is given separately by the end of this chapter as it is concidered to be the most ancient a systematic system of medicine. It is also important, as it is the first system to document so many different types of medicinal plants with specific therapeutic property. Therefore, Ayurveda is recognized to be the mother of ‘Herbalisam’ in more than one way owing to its specific principles and practises in disease dignosis & drug administration.

Further on Ayurvedic medicines:

Ayurveda (Devanagari: आयुर्वेद) or Ayurvedic medicine is an ancient system of health care that is native to the Indian subcontinent. It is presently in daily use by millions of people in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and indirectly through it being the major influence on Unani, Chinese and Tibetan Medicine[citation needed]. The word "Ayurveda" is a tatpurusha compound of the word āyus meaning "life" or "life principle", and the word veda, which refers to a system of "knowledge". Thus "Ayurveda" roughly translates as the "knowledge of life". According to Charaka Samhita, "life" itself is defined as the "combination of the body, sense organs, mind and soul, the factor responsible for preventing decay and death, which sustains the body over time, and guides the processes of rebirth".  According to this perspective, Ayurveda is concerned with measures to protect "ayus", which includes healthy living along with therapeutic measures that relate to physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony. Ayurveda is also one among the few traditional systems of medicine to contain a sophisticated system of surgery (which is referred to as "salya-chikitsa").