What Is Herbal Medicine?.
Throughout history, almost all societies have used plants for therapeutic purposes. For
example, the oldest surviving prescription, carved into a clay tablet and dating from
3000 BC, is for garlic. Over thousands of years, a medical pharmacopoeia developed in
every culture, from Asia to the Americas, to Europe and Africa. Over an extensive
period of time, Chinese herbalists documented the healing properties of more than
7,000 herbs and thousands of herbal combinations. St. John’s wort has a 2,500-year his-
tory of safe and effective use and was prescribed as medicine by Hippocrates (460–377
BC) himself, though, of course, he had a different name for it. Galen (130–200 AD)
described 130 herbal antidotes and medicines, and Dioscorides (first century AD) wrote
about the medicinal properties of 500 plants and described how to prepare 1,000 simple
remedies. The ancient Egyptians used peppermint and spearmint to relax the digestive
tract, while Chinese and Ayurvedic doctors used mint to treat colds, coughs, and fevers.
When Europeans came to the Americas, they found that Native Americans had a
vast pharmacopeia of medicinal plants such as birch, blackberry, coneflower, gin-
seng, goldenseal, and ginger, handed down from generation to generation. Early
Jesuit missionaries in Canada discovered American ginseng in the early 1700s and
exported it to Asia where it became a highly revered tonic. The Shakers (Church of
the United Society of Believers), who were great friends of Native Americans, were
the first to cultivate medicinal plants in mass quantities and became the first rep-
utable pharmaceutical manufacturers in the United States. Until the Civil War dis-
rupted their efforts, they were selling 354 varieties of therapeutic herbs.
During the early 20th century, tincture of echinacea was highly valued for its antibiotic
properties until synthetic antibiotics became available. Kava, used to calm the nervous
system and decrease anxiety, was even sold in the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog dur-
ing the 1920s. Many herbs used in ancient times are still in use today throughout the
world. Herbal medicine has generally been more widely accepted outside the United
States, where health care providers often combine it with conventional therapy.
Researchers are intensifying their efforts to collect and screen more natural products
for their medicinal properties. Gordon Cragg, chief of the National Cancer Institute’s
natural-products branch states, “Nature produces chemicals that no chemist would
ever dream of at the laboratory bench.” The most concentrated and diverse number
of healing herbs is found in a wide band around the equator. Unfortunately, destruc-
tion of these natural plant habitats, especially tropical rain forests, is driving many
species to extinction before they can be found and studied.
Much of what is known about herbs comes from Germany, where an expert panel
called Commission E, set up in 1978, reviewed all available literature on 300 medici-
nal herbs, issuing recommendations for their use. Several smaller pharmaceutical
companies in the United States, such as Shaman Pharmaceuticals, are working
closely with native herbalists in a number of countries. In addition, the National84 ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TOALTERNATIVE MEDICINE