History of Herbal Medicine
Early humans recognized their dependence on nature in both health and illness. Led by instinct, taste, and experience, primitive men and women treated illness by using plants, animal parts, and minerals that were not part of their usual diet. Physical evidence of use of herbal remedies goes back some 60,000 years to a burial site of a Neanderthal man uncovered in 1960 (Solecki, 1975). In a cave in northern Iraq, scientists found what appeared to be ordinary human bones. An analysis of the soil around the bones revealed extraordinary quantities of plant pollen that could not have been introduced accidentally at the burial site. Someone in the small cave community had consciously gathered eight species of plants to surround the dead man. Seven of these are medicinal plants still used throughout the herbal world (Bensky and Gamble, 1993). All cultures have long folk medicine histories that include the use of plants. Even in ancient cultures, people methodically and scientifically collected information on herbs and developed well-defined herbal pharmacopoeias. Indeed, well into the 20th century much of the pharmacopoeia of scientific medicine was derived from the herbal lore of native peoples. Many drugs, including strychnine, aspirin, vincristine, taxol, curare, and ergot, are of herbal origin. About one-quarter of the prescription drugs dispensed by community pharmacies in the United States contain at least one active ingredient derived from plant material (Farnsworth and Morris, 1976).
Middle East medicine. The invention of writing was a focus around which herbal knowledge could accumulate and grow. The first written records detailing the use of herbs in the treatment of illness are the Mesopotamian clay tablet writings and the Egyptian papyrus. About 2000 B.C., King Assurbanipal of Sumeria ordered the compilation of the first known materia medica--an ancient form of today's United States Pharmacopoeia--containing 250 herbal drugs (including garlic, still a favorite of herbal doctors). The Ebers Papyrus, the most important of the preserved Egyptian manuscripts, was written around 1500 B.C. and includes much earlier information. It contains 876 prescriptions made up of more than 500 different substances, including many herbs (Ackerknecht, 1973).
Greece and Rome. One of the earliest materia medica was the Rhizotomikon, written by Diocles of Caryotos, a pupil of Aristotle. Unfortunately, the book is now lost. Other Greek and Roman compilations followed, but none was as important or influential as that written by Dioscorides in the 1st century A.D., better known by its Latin name De Materia Medica. This text contains 950 curative substances, of which 600 are plant products and the rest are of animal or mineral origin (Ackerknecht, 1973). Each entry includes a drawing, a description of the plant, an account of its medicinal qualities and method of preparation, and warnings about undesirable effects.
Muslim world. The Arabs preserved and built on the body of knowledge of the Greco-Roman period as they learned of new remedies from remote places. They even introduced to the West the Chinese technique of chemically preparing minerals. The principal storehouse of the Muslim materia medica is the text of Jami of Ibn Baiar (died 1248 A.D.), which lists more than 2,000 substances, including many plant products (Ackerknecht, 1973). Eventually this entire body of knowledge was reintroduced to Europe by Christian doctors traveling with the Crusaders. Indeed, during the Middle Ages, trade in herbs became a vast international commerce.
East India. India, located between China and the West, underwent a similar process in the development of its medicine. The healing that took place before India's Ayurvedic medical corpus was similar to that of ancient Egypt or China (i.e., sickness was viewed as a punishment from the gods for a particular sin). Ayurvedic medicine emerged during the rise of the philosophies of the Upanishads, Buddhism, and other schools of thought in India. Herbs played an important role in Ayurvedic medicine. The principal Ayurvedic book on internal medicine, the Characka Samhita, describes 582 herbs (Majno, 1975). The main book on surgery, the Sushruta Samhita, lists some 600 herbal remedies. Most experts agree that these books are at least 2,000 years old.
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