A Short History of Herbal Medicine
Herbal Medicine has an incredibly long pedigree, which stretches far into the misty days of prehistory. Archaeological finds have shown that individuals within communities were preparing herbal remedies as long ago as the Neolithic era, some 60,000 years ago.
The cradle lands of civilization furnish us with written texts illustrating the use of herbs. The Ebers Papyrus, dating from about 1600 BC, lists some 700 drugs, charms and incantations. The majority of these drugs were herbs. Ancient Babylonian tablets of clay list some 230 commonly used preparations. Finally, the Ancient Chinese during the Shang dynasty (around 1700 BC) were writing texts on herbal medicine. The most famous Ancient Chinese text was a distillate of these early works, written as Shen Nung’s Herbal in 273 BC.
The Classical Greeks were responsible for removing much of the magic from the practice of medicine. In particular, Hippocrates mentions some 250 useful herbs in his great works (or at least in the writings attributed to the great physician.) This was later extended by Dioscorides, a Greek physician of the first Century AD, who published his De Materia Medica, which contained over 600 medicinal plants. Hippocrates believed that the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, acted upon by some sort of vital force became activated into humors or Vital Fluids once they had been assimilated and absorbed into the body. There were four Vital Fluids - blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. He taught that air absorbed through the lungs would be transformed into blood; water would eventually become phlegm; earth (from the substance of food) would become black bile, and heat or fire would become yellow bile.
……. more on this article.
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