Ancient Egyptians’ favorite laxatives were figs, dates, and castor oil. More than 500 drug remedies were used in Mesopotamia, some of mineral origin. Hebrew medicine included dressing wounds with oil, wine, and balsam. Ancient Hindus discovered the calming effects of an Indian plant that was later made into one of the first tranquilizers in modern medicine.
Indeed, many modern medicines of today were originally made from herbs. Here are few:
Chinese herbal medicine schools are equivalent to the West’s medical schools, requiring years of intense study. Natural methods and more conventional methods of healing are utilized side by side. So why didn’t everyone’s natural health philosophy evolve together and happily integrate with our medical procedures just like the Chinese? Well, the answer is too long to be contained in a fortune cookie, but let’s take a look at how medicine and health care evolved over time.
In the eighteenth century, there began a shift dividing the use of nature as a cure and the use of complicated medical procedures as two philosophies that arose from differing German physicians. One approach believed that the soul is the vital principle and that it controls organic development; the other considered the body a machine and life as a mechanical process. The mechanistic beliefs eventually overpowered German universities and put to rest the philosophy of the four elements and eliminated this idea from medical schools.
Let’s take a look at some of the influential people who popularized herbal remedies in the West.
Indeed, many modern medicines of today were originally made from herbs. Here are few:
- Quinine, derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, was used primarily to cure malaria before the production of synthetic drugs for this use. In 1944, the American chemists Robert Woodward and William Doering managed to synthesize quinine from coal tar.
- Digitalis is a heart-stimulating drug made from the foxglove plant.
- The bark of the white willow tree contains a compound known as salicin, from which a synthesized version has been made called acetylsalicylic acid, commonly known as aspirin.
- Local anesthetics, such as the numbing shot given to you by your dentist, originally was derived from the leaves of the coca plant.
Chinese herbal medicine schools are equivalent to the West’s medical schools, requiring years of intense study. Natural methods and more conventional methods of healing are utilized side by side. So why didn’t everyone’s natural health philosophy evolve together and happily integrate with our medical procedures just like the Chinese? Well, the answer is too long to be contained in a fortune cookie, but let’s take a look at how medicine and health care evolved over time.
In the eighteenth century, there began a shift dividing the use of nature as a cure and the use of complicated medical procedures as two philosophies that arose from differing German physicians. One approach believed that the soul is the vital principle and that it controls organic development; the other considered the body a machine and life as a mechanical process. The mechanistic beliefs eventually overpowered German universities and put to rest the philosophy of the four elements and eliminated this idea from medical schools.
Let’s take a look at some of the influential people who popularized herbal remedies in the West.
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