Herbal supplements have become more popular in the mainstream in recent years. It’s easy to find herbs to naturally relieve everything from anxiety and depression to joint pain and sleep difficulty. St John’s Wort has become widely known and used to relieve mild to moderate mood changes or a depressed mood caused by everyday stress. Valerian Root is used by many to relax and, at higher doses, to alleviate occasional sleep difficulty. While herbal supplements are seeing a surge in popularity, herbal medicines have actually been in use by various cultures around the world for centuries. In fact, many of our modern drugs use some portion of plant material, and many of them originated from herbal remedies.
Traditional Chinese Medicine, or TCM, has used herbs for thousands of years in much the same way that we use prescription medications today. In 2735 B.C., Shen Nong, the emperor of China, wrote an herbal remedy resource that is still used by practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine today. We can even see how some of our modern biomedicine practices originated from Shen Nong’s recommendations. He suggested the use of Ma Huang, or ephedrine, for respiratory problems, and we now use ephedrine in the United States as an over-the-counter decongestant.
Shen Nong’s methods represent the original, ancient Chinese herbal tradition. The first resource outlining the pharmacology of Chinese medicine was known as the Shennong Becau Jing, and it contained instructions on the use of 252 herbal remedies. The Shennong Becau Jing dates to the first century C.E., during the Han Dynasty.
The Chinese aren’t the only culture that used herbs as a main form of medical treatment. King Hammurabi of Babylon documented traditional herbal remedies. Middle Eastern cultures have classically used herbs for a variety of ailments. Historians have found medical texts from Mesopotamia, India and Egypt illustrating the proper use of herbal remedies, and Egyptian hieroglyphs depict doctors prescribing senna pods for constipation and peppermint for digestive problems.
Western medicine also has a rich herbal history. During the Middle Ages, almost every household had an herb garden full of healing herbs. Nicholas Culpeper wrote A Physical Directory in 1649 and The English Physician a few years later. The English Physician was a renowned pharmacopeia full of instructions for using herbal medicine, and this reference still influences herbal medicine today.
Before the advent of prescription medication, Pharmacopeia was published in 1820 in the United States. This text set forth lists and descriptions of various herbal remedies as well as dosages, usages and properties. Herbs were the main source of medicine for many decades of American medicine.
Today it is estimated that 80% of the world’s population still use herbs as their primary form of medicine. Ayurvedic, naturopathic, Traditional Chinese, homeopathic and Native American medical traditions all use herbal medicine as part of their treatment regimens, and Americans interested in using herbal medicine can find practitioners of any of these medical traditions currently working in the United States. The US Food and Drug Administration’s official position states that herbal medicine needs further research to ascertain efficacy, however, the historical use of herbs (plus the fact that they’re still in use today) points to the undeniable efficacy of herbal medicine for human health.
By : Pia Carleson
