Modern Day Herbalism
The use of plants as medicines predates written human history and archaeological evidence indicates we were using medicinal plants during the Paleolithic era (approximately 60,000 years ago). In Mesopotamia the Sumerians created clay tablets with lists of hundreds of medicinal plants (such as myrrh and opium) and the Ancient Egyptians wrote the Ebers Papyrus around 1500 BC, which contains information on over 850 plant medicines, including garlic, juniper, cannabis, castor bean, aloe, and mandrake.
In India the use of herbs to treat ailments forms a large part of Ayurvedic medicine and of course everyone is familiar with how plants and herbs are used extensively in traditional Chinese Medicine. The Greeks took herbalism into the modern age and removed much of the mysticism and magic which were present in earlier texts. Hippocrates mentions 250 useful herbs in his great works, and a Greek Physician named Dioscorides published a book called De Materia Medica which contained over 600 medicinal plants. Another Greek Galen produced detailed compendiums on medicine which included more than 600 plants and these were translated and consulted by physicians around the world for hundreds of years.
Throughout the Medieval period physical and spiritual health continued to be supported mainly with plants and herbs. This treatment was usually carried out by monks and nuns who provided nursing services, with the Benedictine monasteries known for their in depth knowledge of herbals. They tended gardens which grew the herbs which were considered to be useful for the treatment of the various human ills. The monks also spent much of their time translating classical works on herbalism into Latin and producing "Herbals" to be used by physicians.
The 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries were the great age of herbals, many of them available for the first time in English and other languages rather than Latin or Greek.
Alongside the traditional practices of Herbalism there were many learned men of science and medicine who believed illness was caused by "bad humours" in the body which had to be driven out and released. The famous American doctor Benjamin Rush, Treasurer of the Mint, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, authored many medical textbooks, in which he recommended dousing patients with cold water in the winter, twirling patients from ropes suspended from the ceiling for hours on end, as well as beating, starving and verbally abusing patients. He also poured acid on their backs and cut them with knives allowing the wounds to be kept open for months or years, to facilitate "permanent discharge of bad humours from the brain".
When King Charles II woke up feeling ill his Royal Barber took a pint of blood, and his doctors drained a further eight ounces. He was made to sw
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