Historical
Background
Eight
species of pollen bearing plants were
found in the grave of a Neanderthal man dating back as far
as 60,000 years. Of the species discovered and analysed, seven
of them are still used locally today for medicinal purposes.
As examples:
Althoea
genus - intestinal tract disorders and irritated throats
Muscari
genus - valued as a diuretic
Achillaea
genus - general tonic, insect repellant
Ephedra
- asthma remedy and cardiac stimulant, the active ingredient
is ephedrine
Most
cultures known to anthropology have been found to use some
form of healing through the use of healing plants as listed
in the example above used to exert a beneficial effect on
every part of the body.
As
the oldest form of therapy used by mankind the knowledge for
use of the correct type of plant seems to be based on a well
developed dowsing instinct. Wild animals posess this instinct
allowing them to seek out plants that provide nutrition and
avoiding those which will poison. The use of dowsing powers
would explain the amazing continuity of medicinal plant usage
in the days preceding written records when continuity of knowledge
may have been broken by death or the scattering of communities.
For
example a plant-extract that has marked anti-oestrogenic activity
from the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis has been used for the regulation
of fertility by primitive peoples in places thousands of miles
apart, ranging from Fiji, Papua-New Guinea, Samoa, India,
Indonesia, Kuwait, East New Britain, New Caledonia and Trinidad
to Vietnam. The use of this plant is at the very least inspired
guesswork.
Almost
every tribe has it's medicine man or woman, priest or priestess,
the living repository of medical knowledge for the community.
Only when death is felt to be near is this jealously gaurded
knowlege handed on to a successor under the strictest oaths
of secrecy. Many plants were common knowledge throughout the
tribe for the treatment of common problems like wounds, digestive
upsets or mild fevers, other plants were so highly valued
or potent in their activity, that their use was restricted
to the healer alone.
Today
we still consider Hippocrates (468-377 B.C.) as the most important
and interesting medical thinker of early times, with his emphasis
on a balanced, wholistic approach to doctoring, it was not
Hippocrates though who was eventually enthroned as the patron
saint of the medieval school. it was an immigrant doctor named
Galen (A.D. 131-200), a native of Pergamom in Asia Minor,
who had travelled to Alexandria to study at the famous school
of medicine and stayed on to practice. he soon became well
know as a surgeon to gladiatorsand on the strength of this
reputation went to Rome. his practice was so successful that
when the post of court physician fell vacant Galen's name
was among those put forward. He was appointed personal physician
to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180) whom he served
until his death, he continued the same post for Aurelius'
successors until his own death in A.D. 200.
Like
the great medical traditions of Ancient China, India and Egypt,
Hippocratic medicine had stressed the idea that balance, mental
emotional and physical was essential to health:disease was
a disturbance of this balance and assisted by the patient's
own natural powers of recuperation it was the duty of the
physician to restore. Medical practice derived from a theory
known as "humoral" in which the four humours for
blood, bile, phlegm and choler were equally balanced.
Four
centuries later, Galen learned these ideas enthusiastically
and adopted the Hippocratic teaching of the four humoursand
made it the corner stone of an elaborate and rigid system
of medicine. European medical thinking was paraylsed for the
next 1500 years. Not until William Harvey proved in 1628 that
contrary to what Galen taught, the blood of a human circulated
constantly around the body, did Galen's great authority begin
to slip. Physicians had become so used to this theory that
they adopted a series of systems in medicine that were often
more disasterous for their patients than conservative Galen
had ever been.
Galen
was authoritative on drug plants as on other aspects of the
healing art, he bought system, rules and a complete classification
to the herbal materia medica, imposing his own rigid order
on the untidy plant kingdom. All drug plants were evaluated
in terms of their reaction with a patients humours in his
massive Peri krateos kai dunameos ton naplon pharmakon.
Once a physician had diagnosed the patients particular humoral
imbalance, he had only to prescribe the proper drug to counteract
it. There were dozens of plants to choose from, their virtue
measured on a scale of four: "hot and moist in the first
degree...cold and dry...cold in the third degree...".
From Galen's painstaking classification comes the word "simple":
to him it meant a herb posessing a single quality, such as
heat or moisture. It eventually came to mean one of the plant
constituents in a complex prescription.
Had
Galen had lived and written a couple of centuries earlier,
doubtless other great and more original thinkers would have
arisen to dispute his elaborate theories and dilute his authority.
With the crumbling of the Roman order and Aleric and his Goths
appearing in Rome a century following Galen's death there
was nobody left to dispute him.
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