The history of herbalism is closely tied with the history of medicine from prehistoric times up until the development of the germ theory of disease in the 19th century. Modern medicine from the 19th century to today has been based on evidence gathered using the scientific method. Evidence-based use of pharmaceutical drugs, often derived from medicinal plants, has largely replaced herbal treatments in modern health care. However, many people continue to employ various forms of traditional or alternative medicine. These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food-borne pathogens.
Prehistory The use of plants as medicines far predates written human history. Hominids other than Homo, including orangutans, have been known to treat illness or injury with medicinal plants.
Archaeological plant samples gathered from prehistoric burial sites indicate that Neanderthals were using medicinal plants during the Paleolithic, approximately 60,000 years ago. Analysis of the burial site Shanidar IV, in northern Iraq has yielded large amounts of pollen from 8 plant species, 7 of which are used now as herbal remedies.). Paul B. Pettitt has argued that "the pollen was deposited by the burrowing rodent Meriones tersicus, which is common in the Shanidar microfauna and whose burrowing activity can be observed today". Evidence has also been found at El Sidrón of Neanderthals self-medicating over 48,000 years ago with poplar as an anti-inflammatory, and Penicillium rubens was also found in their microbiome.
Medicinal herbs were found in the personal effects of Ötzi the Iceman, whose body was frozen in the Ötztal Alps for more than 5,000 years. These herbs appear to have been used to treat the parasites found in his intestines.
Ancient history
Mesopotamia In Mesopotamia, the written study of herbs dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, who created clay tablets with lists of hundreds of medicinal plants (such as myrrh and opium).
Ancient Egypt Ancient Egyptian texts are of particular interest due to the language and translation controversies that accompany texts from this era and region. These differences in conclusions stem from the lack of complete knowledge of the Egyptian language: many translations are composed of mere approximations between Egyptian and modern ideas, and there can never be complete certainty of meaning or context. While physical documents are scarce, texts such as the Papyrus Ebers serve to illuminate and relieve some of the conjecture surrounding ancient herbal practices. The Papyrus consists of lists of ailments and their treatments, ranging from "disease of the limbs" to "diseases of the skin" and has information on over 850 plant medicines, including garlic, juniper, cannabis, castor bean, aloe, and mandrake. Treatments were mainly aimed at ridding the patient of the most prevalent symptoms because the symptoms were largely regarded as the disease itself. Knowledge of the collection and preparation of such remedies are mostly unknown, as many of the texts available for translation assume the physician already has some knowledge of how treatments are conducted and therefore such techniques would not need restating. Though modern understanding of Egyptian herbals stem from the translation of ancient texts, there is no doubt that trade and politics carried the Egyptian tradition to regions across the world, influencing and evolving many cultures medical practices and allowing for a glimpse into the world of ancient Egyptian medicine. Herbs used by Egyptian healers were mostly indigenous in origin, although some were imported from other regions like Lebanon. Other than papyri, evidence of herbal medicine has also been found in tomb illustrations or jars containing traces of herbs.
India In India, Ayurveda medicine has used many herbs such as turmeric possibly as early as 1,000 BC. Earliest Sanskrit writings such as the Rig Veda, and Atharva Veda are some of the earliest available documents detailing the medical knowledge that formed the basis of the Ayurveda system. Many other herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda were later described by ancient Indian herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta during the 1st millennium BC. The Sushruta Samhita attributed to Sushruta in the 6th century BC describes 700 medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 preparations based on animal sources.
China In China, seeds likely used for herbalism have been found in the archaeological sites of Bronze Age China dating from the Shang dynasty. The mythological Chinese emperor Shennong is said to have written the first Chinese pharmacopoeia, the "Shennong Ben Cao Jing". The "Shennong Ben Cao Jing" lists 365 medicinal plants and their uses—including Ephedra (the shrub that introduced the drug ephedrine to modern medicine), hemp, and chaulmoogra (one of the first effective treatments for leprosy). Succeeding generations augmented on the Shennong Bencao Jing, as in the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs), a 7th-century Tang dynasty treatise on herbal medicine.
Ancient Greece and Rome
Hippocrates The Hippocratic Corpus serves as a collection of texts that are associated with the 'Father of Western Medicine', Hippocrates of Kos. Though the actual authorship of some of these texts is disputed, each reflects the general ideals put forth by Hippocrates and his followers. The recipes and remedies included in parts of the Corpus no doubt reveal popular and prevalent treatments of the early ancient Greek period.
Though any of the herbals included in the Corpus are similar to those practiced in the religious sectors of healing, they differ strikingly in the lack of rites, prayers, or chants used in the application of remedies. This distinction is truly indicative of the Hippocratic preference for logic and reason within the practices of medicine.
The ingredients mentioned in the Corpus consist of a myriad of herbs, both local to Greece and imported from exotic locales such as Arabia. While many imported goods would have been too expensive for common household use, some of the suggested ingredients include the more common and cheaper elderberries and St. John's Wort.
Galen Galen of Pergamon, a Greek physician practicing in Rome, was certainly prolific in his attempt to write down his knowledge on all things medical—and in his pursuit, he wrote many texts regarding herbs and their properties, most notably his Works of Therapeutics. In this text, Galen outlines the merging of each discipline within medicine that combine to restore health and prevent disease. While the subject of therapeutics encompasses a wide array of topics, Galen's extensive work in the humors and four basic qualities helped pharmacists to better calibrate their remedies for the individual person and their unique symptoms.
Diocles of Carystus The writings of Diocles of Carystus were also extensive and prolific in nature. With enough prestige to be referred to as "the second Hippocrates", his advice in herbalism and treatment was to be taken seriously. Though the original texts no longer exist, many medical scholars throughout the ages have quoted Diocles rather extensively, and it is in these fragments that we gain knowledge of his writings. It is purported that Diocles actually wrote the first comprehensive herbal- this work then cited numerous times by contemporaries such as Galen, Celsus, and Soranus.
Pliny In what is one of the first encyclopedic texts, Pliny the Elder's Natural History serves as a comprehensive guide to nature and also presents an extensive catalog of herbs valuable in medicine. With over 900 drugs and plants listed, Pliny's writings provide a very large knowledge base upon which we may learn more about ancient herbalism and medical practices. Pliny himself referred to ailments as "the greatest of all the operations of nature," and the act of treatment via drugs as impacting the "state of peace or of war which exists between the various departments of nature".
Dioscorides Much like Pliny, Pedanius Dioscorides constructed a pharmacopeia, De Materia Medica, consisting of over 1000 medicines produced form herbs, minerals, and animals. The remedies that comprise this work were widely utilized throughout the ancient period and Dioscorides remained the greatest expert on drugs for over 1,600 years.
Similarly important for herbalists and botanists of later centuries was Theophrastus' Historia Plantarum, written in the 4th century BC, which was the first systematization of the botanical world.
Middle Ages
While there are certainly texts from the medieval period that denote the uses of herbs, there has been a long-standing debate between scholars as to the actual motivations and understandings that underline the creation of herbal documents during the medieval period. The first point of view dictates that the information presented in these medieval texts were merely copied from their classical equivalents without much thought or understanding. The second viewpoint, which is gaining traction among modern scholars, states that herbals were copied for actual use and backed by genuine understanding.
Medical writers and students of medicine in the 5th century based their knowledge of herbalism on the classical text and practices shared among scholars their majority of knowledge of plants, plant names, and plant lore. Most botanical classical texts were shared by the Greek or Latin language. Eventually, when herbalism became a subtopic of modern medicine the Greeks and Romans studied herbalism. They had to transition their knowledge of these important medicinal herbs to not only document but they had to understand the process of herbalism that happened over many centuries. This was not without its challenges because herbalists in the 5th–10th century found difficulties due to the lack of knowledge of herbalism that had not been discovered and studied thoroughly. The earliest record of herbalism first was recorded in the first-century BC in western Europe. The importance of herbalism in the Middle Ages was not only crucial to survival without prescription drugs such as those used today but was the learning base of natural remedies we still use in modern times. Knowledge of the practice of Herbalism has been around since the Stone Age. Plant medicine plays an important role in how medicine was also developed throughout history.