Abstract
Traditional medicines usually use combinational formula that is prepared by mixing different varieties of medicinal herbs and boiling them in water to yield a decoction. In recent years a modified method has been proposed and practiced wherein the individual herbs are boiled with water separately and later these extracts are mixed together for use. This practice has lead to a constant controversy concerning the chemical and biological equivalence between the preparations arriving out of these two methodologies. In this research, we attempted to study the effects of traditional and individual preparation of Ssanghwa-tang (ST) to evaluate their equivalence in terms of its antioxidant activity and polyphenol content. The study results indicate that the polyphenol contents as well as the extraction yields of these two preparations were very similar to each other.
