History of Herbal Supplements

Monday, June 23, 2008

General History of Herbal

History of Herbal Supplements in the written record, the study dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, who explaine well-established medicinal uses for such plants. History of herbal supplements are first known Chinese herb book, dating from about 2500 - 3000 B.C., record 365 medicinal plants and their usage. The Egyptians of 1000 B.C. are recognized to have herbs (herbal supplements) for medicine and the Old Testament also talk about herb (herbal supplements) use and herb cultivation . Like their predecessors, the ancient Greeks and Romans made medicinal use of plants. Greek and Roman medicinal practices, as preserved in the writings of Hypocrites and Galen, provided the patterns for later western medicine. Hypocrites, as additional history of herbal supplements, advocated the use of some simple herbal drugs to help the body’s own “life force” in eliminating the problem. Galen believed that direct intervention with large doses of more or less complex drug mixtures, including plant, animal, and mineral ingredients, often accompanied by some magical incantations, was required to correct bodily imbalances that triggered disease. The Greek physician compiled the first European article on the properties and uses of medicinal plants, De Materia Medica. Dioscorides in the first century AD; his compendium of more that 500 plants remained an authoritative reference into the seventeenth century. Other important histrory of herbal supplements for herbalists and botanists of later centuries was the Greek book that founded the science of botany, Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum, written in the fourth century B.C.
History of herbal supplements transformed little during the Middle Ages. The beginning Christian church discouraged the formal practice of medicine, preferring faith healing, but many Greek and roman writings on medicine, as on other subjects, were preserved by diligent hand copying of manuscripts in monasteries. The monasteries thus tended to become local centers of medical knowledge, and their herb gardens provided the raw materials for simple healing of common disorders. At the same time, folk medicine in the home and village continues uninterrupted, supporting numerous wandering and settled herbalists.
The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were the great age of herbals, many of them available for the first time in English and other languages rather than Latin or Greek. The first herbal to be published in English was the anonymous Grete Herbal of 1526. The two best-recognized herbals in English were The Herball or General History of Plants (1597) by John Gerard and The English Physician Enlarged (1653) by Nicholas Culpeper. The Age of Exploration and the Columian Exchange introduced new medicinal plants to Europe. The Badianus Manuscript was an illustrated Aztec herbal translated into Latin in the 16th century.