Herbal Information

History

Medicinal plants have been always a part of mankind’s healing armamentarium. They even have been found in Neanderthal burial sites. Ancient cultures, such as the Sumerians and Egyptians in our “cradle of civilization” and the Aztecs and Mayans in the Western Hemisphere relied on plants for medicines.

Herbal medicine is the cornerstone of age-old Eastern healing disciplines that live on today. Some of these include Traditional Chinese Medicine and India’s Ayurvedic medicine, which have both become increasingly popular recently in the West.

Indigenous healing traditions also emphasized medicinal plants, and many became incorporated into Western medicine. For example, over 200 Native American herbal medicines have been listed at one time in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. Ironically, the most powerful and sacred Native American medicinal plant, tobacco, has become our substance of greatest abuse.

Herbal medicine even laid the foundation for Western medicine. The Ancient Greeks - including Hippocrates, the Father of Western Medicine - and, in turn, the Romans relied extensively on herbal remedies. Through the Dark Ages, herbal knowledge was preserved by Islamic cultures and by village women, many of whom were burned at the stake as witches for their healing talents.

The discovery of numerous New World medicinal plants stimulated renewed interest in herbal remedies, and, as a result, by the mid-1800’s, most Western medicines were plant derived.

The interest in herbal medicine subsided, however, as a schism began to grow between botany and medicine. We started to lose our connection to nature as society became more industrialized, and pharmaceutical companies began to chemically synthesize, patentable, money-making drugs. As modern medicine evolved around pharmaceutical concepts, it neglected herbal remedies.

Currently, U.S. physicians obtain most of their information on medicines from the pharmaceutical industry, a giant economic force whose drug products generate more than a $100 billion a year in revenues in this country alone.

Today’s World

Once again, however, the tide is turning. Many doctors are revisiting herbal remedies in response to consumer interest. And, as consumers themselves, 40% of family physicians also use them. In addition, herbal alternatives are increasingly being used to control soaring healthcare costs. For example, an Oklahoma HMO has started prescribing St. John’s wort instead of Prozac because the herb is just as effective yet much cheaper.

Although we may think that our pharmaceutically-based medical practices are the norm for the world, this is not true. In fact, 80% of the world’s population relies on herbal remedies because they cannot afford Western drugs.

Even in many wealthy nations, herbal remedies are being re-integrated into mainstream medicine. For example, in Germany and France, millions of herbal prescriptions are written each year, ginkgo biloba is prescribed more often than any pharmaceutic, and 30-40% of all doctors relies on herbal remedies as their primary medications.