Antibiotics give immediate cure, but have side effects. Most of the plant extracts have antibiotic activity. Here the work done is to compare the efficacy of both antibiotics and the plant extracts for different pathogens isolated from clinical specimens. For this 125 different clinical specimens were collected from hospital (pus-25, urine-50, sputum-25, throat swab-25). All the clinical specimens were processed; the isolated microorganisms were identified using staining and biochemical tests. The following organisms predominant for all clinical specimens (E-coli, Pseudomonas sp., Proteus sp., Klebsiella sp., Staphylococcus sp., Streptococcus sp.). .) MIC of different antibiotics was determined against clinical isolates was performed by standard method. Plants like Achyranthes aspera, Adhatoda vasika, Aloe indica, Andropogon muricatus, Boerhaavia diffusa, Calotropis gigantea, Cardiospermum halicacabum, Cephaelis ipecacuanha, Cocculus cordifolius, Gendarussa vulgaris were selected. Fine powder of air dried specimen was extracted with methanol and it was concentrated. MIC was then determined by using different concentrations. By comparing both the results, the extracts of 4 plants showed antibiotic activity against all isolated pathogens and rest all plants showed activity against minimum 5 pathogens. But in case of antibiotics, only 3 of them showed activity against all the organisms. Thus the present study concluded that the herbal medicines are better than antibiotics.

Key words:Antimicrobial Agent, Plant extract, Clinical specimen, Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC)