A short history of herbalism

A short history of herbalism

herbal medicine is our earliest attempt to heal ourselves, and in fact even some animals visit certain plant species when they are injured or sick. Moose were observed by indigenous people as they were looking for Echinacea plants when they were sick, which caused them to call the plants "moose root"; Other wild animals chew willow bark when they are in need (we now know that wicker bark salicylic acid or aspirin, as it is known when it is synthesized, contains, contains) and monkeys and primates often look for certain fruits and roots when they are sick.

Presumably our ancestors would have treated themselves in this way, undoubtedly long before they developed language skills. Estimates about the exact time at which the Homo sapiens appeared, vary from about 100,000 years ago in the most conservative years ago in the most generous (paleoanthropology is a very competitive science, and every researcher wants his earliest dated humanoid bone fragments to be confirmed as human and not as a "proto-human", but that is another article!) is undoubtedly that our ancestors were Africans.

Although H. Sapiens originally arose long ago, we began to spread from Africa about 100,000 years ago and to displace other hominids (our cousins) such as H. Erectus and (later) H. Neanderthalensis and finally bring them out. 60,000 years ago we had reached today's Australia, and the northernmost tip in America was colonized about 20,000 years ago. Surprisingly, it only took about 1000 years for people to spread from today's Alaska to the top of South America, and if you look at the diversity of climatic and geographical conditions in America, you can only be amazed at the ingenuity and adaptability of our species.

Around 1000 years ago, even the most remote habitable Pacific Islands were colonized.

The reader is forgiven at this point when he wonders what this tour has to do with herbal science, but the point is simple. In every environment in which people have created a home, they quickly discovered all food plants and all medicinal plants. Every culture, in every climate (we have to exclude cultures such as the Inuit and Tatars of Northern Siberia, for which plants only made a small part of their diet) invented their own form of herbal science.

herbalism takes on two forms in most cultures - medicine and ritualism. Some plants are eaten in the event of illness, others are used for shamanic rituals and other religious practices.

In the West, herbal remedies began to lose popularity during the Enlightenment, and with the beginnings of modern medicine at the end of the 17th century, it seemed as if the decline of herbalism was inevitable. Although today we have the most advanced synthetic drugs and medical practices that we have ever had, many researchers are looking for herbs and their extracts as possible ways to treat some of our most fatal diseases. As I write this, laboratories all over the world test and synthesize analogies of their extracts for studies against cancer and incurable virus infections such as HIV.

We no longer need the ritualism and the miracle healing of the shamans, but our ancestors have a advice for us that glows through the millennia - know your herbs and use the plants in your area as they can be saved one day. And yet we continue to clear a rainforest area the size of Kentucky and destroy countless plant species that are still unknown to Western science.