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Modern medicine took its cue from the ancient knowledge of herbal medicines. Ancient civilizations like China, India, Egypt, and Babylon have known the healing properties of some plants. Herbal medicines found its way to Western civilization after only centuries.
About 4,500 years ago, when great civilizations arose in ancient China, India, Babylon, and Egypt, men knew enough about plant remedies to put their knowledge in writing. These written accounts of plant remedies were called herbals. The earliest herbal known was supposedly written by the Chinese emperor Shen Nung about 2,700 BC. It contained accounts of the healing value of about 250 plants. In India, the earliest sacred writings of the Hindus, the Vedas, refer to many healing plants. These plants are described in magical or religious terms, not in scientific ones. In a poem entitled “To a magical plant, that it heal a broken bone,” the poet begs the plant to mend the broken bone and make it grow strong again. In Egypt, carvings on tomb and temple walls show that people used plants for medicines as early as 3,000 BC. A long document written about 1,500 BC, describes more than 800 remedies for all sorts of ailments, from headaches to heart trouble and from sore throats to insect bites. The Greeks copied this plant lore from the Egyptians, and the Romans copied it from the Greeks. From the Romans, it spread to the rest of Europe. During the Middle Ages, Christian monks kept alive the knowledge of plants that could be used as medicines. But it was the Arabs, with their vast empire stretching from the borders of China to the Iberian Peninsula, who organized and developed ancient plant knowledge. The first drugstores are reported to have been set up in Baghdad. These were stalls in the bazaars where the leaves, roots, flowers, seeds, and fruits of 1,400 medicinal plants were sold. Later, in the New World, Spanish explorers found the Incas and Aztecs of Central and South America using medicinal plants that were unknown in Europe. This discovery gave the Spaniards a large number of new plants to add to the European medicine chest. The British and the French found still other new plant remedies being used by the North American Indians. These new plants were brought back to Europe with stories about their healing powers. Chemists and doctors began studying the plants to find out what each one could cure. The scientists studied the plants to find the active, or healing, chemical in each plant. The first important discovery was made in the 1800’s. A German druggist separated morphine from the drug opium, which comes form the opium poppy plant (Morphine is used to relieve pain.) Then two French chemists discovered quinine in the bark of the cinchona tree. (Quinine is used in the treatment of malaria and other diseases.) Discovery upon discovery was made. Many pure chemicals were removed from plants and put into pills or liquids.
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