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Herbalism

The use of plants as medicines predates written human history. A 60 000-year-old 

Neanderthal burial site, "Shanidar IV", in northern Iraq has yielded large amounts of 

pollen from 8 plant species, 7 of which are used now as herbal remedies[16]

In the written record, the study of herbs dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, 

who described well-established medicinal uses for such plants as laurel, caraway, and 

thyme. Ancient Egyptian medicine of 1000 B.C. are known to have used garlic, opium, 

castor oil, coriander, mint, indigo, and other herbs for medicine and the Old Testament 

also mentions herb use and cultivation, including mandrake, vetch, caraway, wheat, 

barley, and rye.

In Indian Ayurveda medicine has used many herbs such as turmeric possibly as early as 

1900 B.C.[17] Many other herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda were later described by 

ancient Indian herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta during the 1st millennium BC. 

The Sushruta Samhita attributed to Sushruta in the 6th century BC describes 700 

medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 preparations based on 

animal sources.[18]

The first Chinese herbal book, the Shennong Bencao Jing, compiled during the Han 

Dynasty but dating back to a much earlier date, possibly 2700 B.C.[citation needed], 

lists 365 medicinal plants and their uses - including ma-Huang, the shrub that 

introduced the drug ephedrine to modern medicine. Succeeding generations augmented on 

the Shennong Bencao Jing, as in the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal 

Herbs), a 7th century Tang Dynasty treatise on herbal medicine.

The ancient Greeks and Romans made medicinal use of plants. Greek and Roman medicinal 

practices, as preserved in the writings of Hippocrates and - especially - Galen, 

provided the pattern for later western medicine. Hippocrates advocated the use of a few 

simple herbal drugs - along with fresh air, rest, and proper diet. Galen, on the other 

hand, recommended large doses of drug mixtures - including plant, animal, and mineral 

ingredients. The Greek physician compiled the first European treatise on the properties 

and uses of medicinal plants, De Materia Medica. In the first century AD, Dioscorides 

wrote a compendium of more than 500 plants that remained an authoritative reference 

into the 17th century. Similarly important for herbalists and botanists of later 

centuries was the Greek book that founded the science of botany, Theophrastus’ Historia 

Plantarum, written in the fourth century B.C.

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