A brief history of Herbal Medicines

[hervie44]

Hi
Do you know how the herbal medications started. Here is a little run down of the history of herbal medicines for the interest of all of you:-

Medicinal plants have been used for medicinal purposes long before recorded history. For example, ancient Chinese and Egyptian papyrus writings describe medicinal plant uses. Indigenous cultures (e.g., African and Native American) used herbs in their healing rituals, while others developed traditional medical systems (e.g., Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine) in which herbal therapies were used systematically. Scientists found that people is different parts of the globe tended to use the same or similar plants for the same purposes.

In the early 19th century, when methods of chemical analysis first became available, scientists began extracting and modifying the active ingredients from plants. Later, chemists began making their own version of plant compounds, beginning the transition from raw herbs to synthetic pharmaceuticals. Over time, the use of herbal medicines declined in favor of pharmaceuticals.

Best regards.

[amanda]

Some says that it starts from the continent of Asia where the earliest traces of Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese has been discovered. These medicines were basically the herbal forms of medicine by using various kinds of plants and animals extract that helped to treat a variety of illnesses/diseases. As technology grow herbal medicine are slowly improving and there are different type of medicine available today and these cater to different problems of health.

[stathy34]

Hi

Herbal medicine is a practice that is as old as mankind, and certainly older than agriculture or writing; every human culture on every continent of the Earth has practiced herbal medicine of one form or another. Perhaps best described as "medicinal botany", herbal medicine involves taking plants, ingesting them, and seeing if some of the elements in the plant have a palliative effect on the symptoms of the ailment.

Herbal remedies have formed the basis of traditional medicine for millennia, and have formed the root of modern pharmacology. While science from roughly the 1880's onwards has striven to isolate the active compounds found in medicinal herbs, the list is ever growing

Among the healing agents isolated from herbal remedies are salicylic acid (aspirin), derived from white willow bark, the vincristine series of anticancer agents, derived from periwinkle, several stimulants (such as ephedra and cocaine) and several analgesics and paralytics

Thanks

[dain45yl]

Herbal medicine is a practice that is as old as mankind, and certainly older than agriculture or writing; every human culture on every continent of the Earth has practiced herbal medicine of one form or another. Perhaps best described as "medicinal botany", herbal medicine involves taking plants, ingesting them, and seeing if some of the elements in the plant have a palliative effect on the symptoms of the ailment.