Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of the cook. – Charlemagne.
The healing comes from nature and not the physician, therefore the physician must start from nature with an open mind – Paracelsus.
Herbal medicine or herbalism is the study of botany and the use of medicinal plants. We can also refer to medicines from herbalism as herbal medicine. Plants have always been a basis for medicines since human existence and it is still widely used or practiced today.
Let me tell it as a story.
Most of our ancestors came from animistic cultures, which believed that all things including plants, hold a spirit. A lot of indigenous people worldwide still revere much of the natural world as sacred and safeguard the plant spirits within.
Many people, especially the aged, possess plant knowledge. As such having this knowledge or having access to someone who had this knowledge made a difference between life and death in the early days. The majority of the world still relies on traditional medicine and even in industrialized countries, folk medicines are still used to treat illness every day.
In Mesopotamia, the written study of herbs dates back over 5000 years and includes medicinal plants such as myrrh and opium.
In ancient Egypt, texts such as Papyrus Ebers dealt with ancient herbal practices. It consisted of a list of ailments and their treatments. This ranged from diseases of the limbs to the skin and information on over 850 plant medicines including garlic, juniper, cannabis, castor bean, aloe, and mandrake. The methodology here was ridding the person of symptoms because they believed the symptoms were just as the disease.
For India, many herbs such as turmeric have been used as early as 4000 BC. Ancient Indian herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta contributed to the Sushruta Samhita which describes 700 medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 from animal sources.
China cannot be left out. Traditional Chinese Medicine has its roots in herbal medicine. All the Yin and Yang and even the Qi is relating to it one way or the other.
In Ancient Greece and Rome, names like Hippocrates and Galen come to mind.
Hippocrates is referred to as the “Father of Medicine”, western medicine, Hippocrates of Kos. He created the ‘Corpus’ which consists of a myriad of herbs, both local to Greece and imported from exotic locales such as Arabia.
Galen on the other hand was a Greek physician practicing in Rome. He wrote texts regarding herbs and their properties. The most notable one is the Works of Therapeutics.
Herbariums were also created along the line to keep records of medicinal plants.
There is a whole lot to say concerning herbal medicine.
Not just green.
It doesn’t end here.
Tracy Obeng Nyamekye
2019/2020 GHEMSA General Secretary.
