tropicalfish
Veteran Member
I hope this is okay to copy and paste the lessons in here. That way everyone can see what we are studying.
Barnes & Noble Universtity free online class "Exploring Herbal Medicine"
Each lesson has several topics with the lecture and discussion for each topic. Following that is a short assignment, then a review with questions and then the answers to the review.
Those of you who are familiar with herbs, please help us amatuers understand our studies. Please join us in our discussion, even if you aren't taking the course.
The first lesson goes into the history of herbs.
Lesson 1 : Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
Topic 1: Hiding in Plain Sight: Your Spice Rack Pharmacy
Topic 2: Shen Nung, King Asoka, Imhotep, Aesculapius, and Hippocrates
Topic 3: Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and the Wise Women
Topic 4: Arabs, Monks, Hildegard of Bingen, and "Witches"
Topic 5: Spices, Signatures, Herbals, and an Old Shropshire Woman
Topic 6: Herbal Medicine in the U.S.
Lesson 1 Topic 1
Lecture and Discussion
Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Your Spice Rack Pharmacy
Even if you're not "into" herbal medicine, chances are that you already have a dozen or so medicinal herbs in your home. All culinary herbs and spices are medicinal. In fact, to our ancient ancestors, their flavor enhancement was incidental to their primary benefit: food preservation.
Our ancestors wrapped meats in aromatic herbs to preserve them, which led to other astonishing discoveries. Those who ate preservative herbs along with meats suffered less illness and, as an added benefit, the meats tasted better.
Today we know that the oils that give aromatic herbs their fragrance and flavor contain antimicrobial compounds that kill many food-spoiling, disease-causing microorganisms. Many culinary herbs and spices are also "antispasmodic," meaning that they help relax the digestive tract.
Lesson 1 Topic 2
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Shen Nung, King Asoka, Imhotep, Aesculapius, and Hippocrates
According to Chinese mythology, legendary emperor and sage Shen Nung invented agriculture around 3400 B.C. and discovered that many plants have medicinal value.
Chinese herbalists believe Shen Nung to be the author of China's first great herbal, or medicinal herb guide. The text listed 237 herbal prescriptions using dozens of herbs including ephedra, rhubarb, and opium poppy.
Over the centuries, the list of official Chinese herb formulas expanded to 11,000. Starting around the 18th century, this number was reduced and Chinese medicine now employs about 300 herbs, 150 of which are now considered indispensable, including Chinese angelica (dang-gui), burdock, chrysanthemum, cinnamon, dandelion, garlic, gentian, ginger, ginseng, hawthorn, licorice, lotus, mint, rhubarb, scullcap, senna, and tea.
Ancient Indians called their medicine Ayurveda, from two Sanskrit words, ayur ("life") and veda ("knowledge"). Ayurvedic medicine developed from the Vedas, India's four books of classic wisdom, which include formulas for medicines using 67 medicinal herbs including ginger, cinnamon, and senna. The first Ayurvedic medical encyclopedia was written around 700 B.C. (four centuries before Hippocrates), and listed 500 herbal formulas.
In 250 B.C., India's King Asoka converted to Buddhism and launched a 1,000-year golden age of Ayurvedic medicine. Ayurvedic herbalists were the first to use Rauwolfia serpentina, the source of resperine, used until recently in Western medicine to manage high blood pressure.
The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (today Iraq) was home successively to the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. One of the world's oldest surviving prescriptions is a Sumerian clay tablet from around 2100 B.C. that references several herbs, including myrrh, cypress, and opium poppy.
The Assyrians built on Sumerian medicine. Assyria was strategically placed along the ancient Spice Route, from Asia to Egypt. Archeologists have unearthed the remains of an Assyrian pharmacy that stocked 230 herbs, including almond, anise, caraway, coriander, juniper, saffron, sesame, turmeric, and willow.
The spice trade also played a major role in Babylonian and Persian medicine.
In 1874, the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers discovered the world's oldest surviving medical text, a 65-foot papyrus dated from around 1500 B.C. The Ebers Papyrus listed 876 herbal formulas from more than 500 plants, including aloe, caraway, castor, chamomile, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, fennel, fenugreek, garlic, gentian, ginger, juniper, mint, myrrh, opium poppy, onions, sesame, saffron, sage, and thyme -- about one-third of the herbs in today's Western herbal medicine.
The most notable Egyptian physician was Imhotep, who eventually became deified. The Egyptians imported enormous quantities of aromatic herbs for perfumes, embalming mixtures, and medicines. But they had even greater affection for garlic and onion. The Egyptians believed garlic and onion strengthened the body and prevented disease (a view supported by modern science).
The early Greeks viewed illness as a divine curse and prayed to Apollo, god of medicine, for recovery. In Greek mythology, Apollo had a son named Aesculapius, a physician-god who was much like Imhotep. (Aesculapius treated the sick with the help of his daughters, Hygeia and Panacea. Hygeia, source of our word "hygiene," represented healthy living, while Panacea, whose name translates as "cure all," treated disease.)
Snakes, sacred to Aesculapius, slithered freely around his temple grounds. Snakes' tongues became a symbol of healing and remained an ingredient in medicinal potions well into the Middle Ages. Aesculapius was often pictured carrying a staff with a snake wrapped around it, and the snake-staff combination became the cadeuceus, the symbol of medicine.
Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), the father of Western medicine, was born to an Aesculapian family on the island of Kos, off the coast of Turkey. Hippocrates rebelled against Aesculapius by secularizing Greek medicine. He believed diseases came not from the gods, but from natural causes. Hippocrates' students attributed the use of 350 medicinal plants to him, among them mint, rosemary, thyme, anise, clove, cinnamon, and burdock.
Lesson 1 Topic 3
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and the Wise Women
Pedanius Dioscorides (A.D. 40-90) was the first true medical botanist and, although he was Greek, served as a physician in the Roman army. In A.D. 78, he published De Materia Medica ("On Medicines"), Europe's first real guide to herbal medicine. It discussed 600 plants, including aloe, anise, chamomile, cinnamon, dill, marjoram, poppy, rhubarb, and thyme.
De Materia Medica remained a standard medical reference for 1,500 years. Virtually every herbal published through the 17th century referred to it.
In Rome, Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) busily compiled ancient scientific knowledge into his 37-volume Historia Naturalis ("Natural History"). Volumes 20 through 27 specifically covered medicinal herbs. Many of Pliny's herbal recommendations guided physicians for centuries.
Fifty years after Pliny, Galen (A.D. 131-200) became Rome's leading physician, and eventually became the physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. At a time when folk midwife-herbalists used single herbs or formulas with only a few ingredients, Galen insisted on complex concoctions of herbs, animal parts, and minerals called "galenicals." As the centuries passed, Europe's nobility favored costly galenicals, while the peasantry stuck to single herbs or simple formulas, which then became known as "simples."
From ancient times and even into the present day, while male physicians ministered to the rich and royal and wrote the classic texts, folk herbalists -- overwhelmingly women -- took care of everyone else. Women healers have gone by many names: midwives, wise women, green women, witches, old wives, and nurses. People like Galen dismissed them as charlatans. We still hear echoes of that prejudice today when physicians and researchers dismiss folk medical wisdom as "old wives' tales."
Ancient physicians shunned female folk herbalists, but at the same time officially recognized women's dominance in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology. Many herbs were used to calm the womb, trigger menstruation, induce abortion, promote or dry up mothers' milk, and treat infant colic and infectious diarrhea.
Lesson 1 Topic 4
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Arabs, Monks, Hildegard of Bingen, and "Witches"
Upon Rome's collapse, Arab civilization stepped up to fill the intellectual void.
Ibn-Sina, also known as Avicenna (A.D. 980-1037), was the leading Arab physician. A follower of Galen, he wrote the Canon Of Medicine, the medical Bible of the West for 600 years. Book Two of the text dealt with herbs, including nutmeg, senna, sandalwood, rhubarb, myrrh, cinnamon, clove, and rosewater.
The Arabs simplified Galen's medicines and developed pharmacy as a field distinct from medicine. They were also the first to use alcohol medicinally with their invention of herbal tinctures (alcohol extracts).
After the fall of Rome, European medicine was dominated by the Catholic Church, which adopted the pre-Hippocratic Greek belief that illness was punishment from God and treatable only by prayer and penance. However, Catholic monks preserved Greco-Roman herbalism by copying the ancient texts. The Benedictine monks were the first Europeans to adopt the Arab practice of making tinctures. They flavored wine with digestion-promoting herbs and created the forerunners of today's liqueurs, one of which is still known as Benedictine.
Charlemagne (A.D. 742-814) was so impressed by the Benedictines' herb gardens and practice of herbal medicine ("physic"), he ordered all the monasteries in his empire to plant "physic gardens" to ensure an adequate supply of medicines throughout his realm.
The most notable Benedictine herbalist was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Abbess of the Rupertsburg convent in the German Rhineland. Hildegard compiled herbal formulas and her book, Hildegard 's Medicine, combined mystical Catholicism and early German folk medicine with her own extensive herbal experience. Her favorite herbs included aloe, apple, basil, bay, blackberry, caraway, celery, clove, dill, fennel, garlic, hyssop, licorice, marjoram, myrrh, nettle, nutmeg, onion, oregano, parsley, raspberry, rosemary, rue, thyme, and watercress.
Hildegard was also the only medieval woman who left any account of "wise women" healing practices. Many of her recommendations were quite sensible. She promoted a balanced diet and tooth-brushing with aloe and myrrh, both of which have antibacterial, decay-preventing properties.
Hildegard was lucky to have lived in the 11th century, for if she had practiced herbalism from 1300 to 1650, she probably would have been burned as a witch.
It is not clear what caused Europe's 350 years of witch-hunts. A recent theory proposes that European rulers and the Catholic Church became alarmed by a decline in population and wanted to stop wise women midwife/herbalists from prescribing herbal contraceptives and abortifacients. The leading medieval contraceptive-abortifacients were taken after intercourse -- "morning-after" plants, in modern parlance. The most popular were pennyroyal, artemisia, and rue. Modern research shows that all three stimulate uterine contractions and abortion.
After 1300 A.D. the image of the folk herbalist changed from helpful wise woman to evil witch. Accusations of "sexual intercourse with the Devil" were typically accompanied by testimony that the alleged witch practiced herbal medicine and made healing mixtures, cosmetics, love potions, aphrodisiacs, abortifacients, and poisons.
Accusations of poisoning were particularly implicative. It is possible that some female herbalists dabbled in herbal assassination, which had been practiced since ancient times. Socrates, for example, was put to death by being forced to drink poison hemlock. But this was the era before the discovery of the "dose-response relationship," the idea that the greater the dose, the greater the effect. Many so-called "witches' plants," poisonous in large amounts, caused no harm in therapeutic or cosmetic amounts. One plant associated with witchcraft was "witch's bells," large amounts of which are poisonous, though small amounts stimulate the heart. After the witch-hunt era, its name was changed to foxglove and it became the source of digitalis, a drug used to treat congestive heart failure.
After the witch-hunts, the saintly Hildegard was forgotten and replaced by the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth, who threw mandrake, belladonna, and other poisonous herbs into their bubbling cauldron. The witch-hunts failed to eradicate women's herbalism, but did succeed in driving it underground.
Lesson 1 Topic 5
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Spices, Signatures, Herbals, and an Old Shropshire Woman
The fall of Rome devastated the spice trade. Although Arab merchants continued importing Asian herbs into Europe, the commerce declined and prices soared. Then came the Crusades, from 1095 until 1291 A.D. Once the Crusaders tasted Asian spices in the Middle East, they returned home with cravings for spices.
The ancient Spice Routes slowly reopened, and by 1400 A.D. Venice and Genoa were major spice importation centers. Not surprisingly, Italy was also a leader in herbal medicine.
Onward Exploration
During the 1400s, the Mongols, supporters of the trade with Europe, lost Western Asia to the Ottoman Turks and the trade routes were closed. In Venice and Genoa, herbs and spice merchants grew desperate for new avenues to the East. If the world were round, as some claimed, it might be possible to sail west across the Atlantic and reach the Indies. Though Christopher Columbus, who hailed from Genoa, never reached the East Indies, he did return from the New World with allspice and red pepper, which the Caribbean Indians called kian, or, cayenne.
Early world exploration was dominated by the Portuguese and Dutch, who monopolized the sea route around Africa to India and the Spice Islands (Indonesia). Their primary trades were in cinnamon, cloves, tea, and black pepper.
Meanwhile, the Spanish concentrated on the New World and its gold. In 1519, Hernando Cortez watched Mexico's Aztec ruler, Montezuma, toast Cortez's arrival by sipping from a golden goblet. Cortez coveted the goblet, but the herbal beverage it contained, chocolatl (chocolate), eventually became more important than the Aztec's gold. In addition to chocolate, Spanish conquistadors returned home with corn, tobacco, potatoes, carrots, strawberries, lima beans, tomatoes, sarsaparilla, passionflower, and, the most important new medicinal herb of all, cinchona (Jesuit or Peruvian bark). Cinchona was the first effective treatment for malaria and became the source of the anti-malarial drug, quinine.
The British were minor players in the world spice trade until 1599, when London merchants pooled their capital and established the British East India Company. The firm began importing pepper and other culinary and medicinal herbs directly from India.
Doctrine of Signatures
Around 1500, Italian philosophers conceived the first new medical philosophy since ancient Roman times, the Doctrine of Signatures, which claimed that a plant's physical appearance revealed its medical value. For example, since walnut shells resemble skulls, and walnuts look like brains, walnuts were used to treat headaches.
One champion of the new Doctrine was Paracelsus (1493-1541). Paracelsus taught at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in the 1520s. As strange as it sounds today, the Doctrine was based on experience with healing herbs. For instance, garlic and onion had been used for centuries as decongestants. Their leaves are hollow; air passes through them. So, under the Doctrine of Signatures, any plant with hollow leaves or stems was considered a respiratory remedy. Unfortunately, the Doctrine of Signatures badly overgeneralized historical experience with herbs.
The Doctrine of Signatures quickly became the new medical dogma. Bile has a yellowish tinge; jaundice, a liver problem, turns the skin yellow. Under the Doctrine, any yellow flower or root was considered a liver medicine. Similarly, any plant with long, snaking roots was used to treat snakebites. Plants with heart-shaped leaves were considered heart remedies. Juicy plants were used as diuretics and lactation promoters.
Paracelsus also discovered the dose-response relationship. "It depends only on the dose," he wrote, "whether a poison is a poison or not." This insight allowed Paracelsus to introduce small doses of many potentially toxic minerals into medicine, including arsenic, sulfur, lead, antimony, and particularly mercury, originally used to treat syphilis, and then later many other diseases. In time, physicians came to view mercury as a panacea.
Medicine for the Privileged
With the invention of the printing press in the 1450s, herbals proliferated and England's university-trained physicians began to fear the loss of their medical monopoly. The physicians lobbied their influential patients in the British Court in the attempt to outlaw the practice of medicine by the "rogues, horse-gelders, rat catchers, idiots, and witches" and restrict it to those who had been university-trained.
In a 1511 decree, Henry VIII reserved the practice of medicine for university-trained physicians and barber/surgeons who had completed apprenticeships. Anyone else had to pass a test administered in Latin by the Bishop of London and a committee of prominent doctors. Of course, folk herbalists could not read Latin. Many didn't read English. While some stopped practicing, most went underground and practiced in secret.
Henry's edict eventually led to a major shortage of doctors, and, in 1543, he rescinded it with the Herbalists' Charter. The Charter came just one year after German botanist Leonhard Fuchs (1501-1566) published De Historia Stirpium ("On Plants"), the first original book of medical botany since Dioscorides' treatise almost 1500 years earlier. It discussed 500 healing herbs, including 100 from the New World.
In 1546, the University of Padua in Italy planted the first academic botanical garden, which helped launch the modern science of botany. In time, most major universities and many physicians and apothecaries planted their own physic gardens.
The most prominent early British herbalist was John Gerard (1545-1612), who established a noted physic garden in Fetter Lane, London. The garden contained more than 1,000 species, including England's first potatoes. In 1586, Gerard was appointed curator of the College of Physicians' Physic Garden and soon after became herbalist to King James I. In 1597, Gerard published his Herball Or Generall Historie Of Plantes, in which he displayed the College of Physicians' characteristic contempt for "foolish women."
John Parkinson (1567-1650) was another pioneering British herbalist. In 1640 he published Theatrum Botanicum ("The Theatre of Plants"), which was subtitled The Universall And Complete Herball. The subtitle proved to be no understatement as the 1,800-page book discussed 3,800 plants, which Parkinson organized into 17 "Classes or Tribes."
Many scientists proposed similar systems, but none stuck until 1737 when Swedish naturalist Carl Linne, also known as Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), developed the Latin binomial genus-and-species system we still use today.
As university medicine slowly became more scientific, leading physicians stopped growing their own herbs and turned instead to the growing number of pharmacists (apothecaries), who used mortars and pestles to grind healing herbs into medicinally usable powders. Not coincidentally, the mortar and pestle became the symbol of pharmacy.
Nicholas Culpeper
During the 17th century, England's most influential herbalist was Nicholas Culpeper. His Complete Herbal And English Physician, first published in 1652, has been in print from the time of its original publication in more than 100 editions -- a record surpassed only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
Egotistical and brash, Culpeper came of age during the English Civil War (1642-1648). Though he came from an aristocratic family, Culpeper was a Puritan and fought for Cromwell. He took a musket ball in the chest, which influenced his decision to study medicine.
Culpeper's fiancée was killed when lightning struck her carriage on her way to their elopement. Beside himself with grief, Culpeper left Cambridge and became an apothecary's apprentice.
Culpeper was an anomaly. He could read Greek and Latin as well as the physicians, and he resented the snobbery of former classmates who became doctors and looked down on apothecaries. Furthermore, as a Puritan, he was outraged that the monarchist College of Physicians ignored the medical needs of the largely Puritan lower classes. Culpeper's solution was to become England's medical Robin Hood.
In 1649, Culpeper translated the College of Physicians' Latin manual, the Pharmacopoiea Londinensis, into English and called it The London Dispensatory and Physical Directory. The Directory gave apothecaries and those without knowledge of Latin their first look at the 1,600 simples and 1,100 other formulas that represented the cutting edge of British medicine. While Culpeper's audacity earned him the physicians' undying hatred, it also earned him the undying respect and admiration of the apothecaries, midwives, and other common people who so desired access to professional medical information.
Culpeper's apothecary shop in Spitalfields (near London) became wildly popular, and he often treated the poor for free.
To make herbal medicine even more accessible, Culpeper published Herbal in 1652. It was revolutionary because it gave equal weight to the official herbalism of the ancient masters and the homegrown folk wisdom of England's "country people."
Culpeper's problem was that he rarely met an herb he didn't consider a panacea. His promotion of every herb for every ill has haunted herbalism ever since.
William Withering
In 1775, about 100 years after the last witch-hunt, 34-year-old William Withering was a doctor in Stafford, England, and an avid medical botanist. In the course of his practice, he heard rumors of an "old Shropshire woman" who could treat "dropsy," that era's term for the disease we now call congestive heart failure. Withering located the woman, a folk herbalist, who described her "secret family recipe," which contained 20 herbs. Withering realized that the active ingredient was foxglove, and after using the treatment himself, he gained a reputation for treating congestive heart failure.
Soon after, Withering published his Account Of The Foxglove And Its Medical Uses, which recounted how he was introduced to the plant and further summarized his results in 163 cases. The drug derived from foxglove, digitalis, has only recently been surpassed by other medications as a treatment for congestive heart failure.
Lesson 1 Topic 6
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Herbal Medicine in the U.S.
Europeans considered Native Americans "ignorant savages" -- except when it came to health and medicine. Many colonists, all too familiar with the plagues, pestilence, and suffering they witnessed and experienced in Europe, became eager students of Indian herbal medicine.
In 1536, French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed to the site of present-day Quebec. Within a few months, 25 of his 100 men had died of "the sailors' disease" (scurvy), and most of the rest were gravely ill. Fortunately for Cartier, a Native American gave the sickly explorers a tea brewed from yellow cedar bark and leaves. Everyone recovered. Later the tea was shown to contain Vitamin C, which prevents and cures scurvy.
Native Americans introduced white settlers to many valuable herbs: black cohosh, black haw, boneset, cascara sagrada, echinacea, chaparral, goldenseal, lobelia, Oregon grape, sarsaparilla, slippery elm, wild cherry, and witch hazel.
Exploration and Exportation
Herbs were also a major colonial export. Furs, tobacco, and cotton generated the most money, but nothing, pound for pound, beat ginseng -- the herb prized in Asia as the ultimate tonic. French Jesuits began shipping Canadian ginseng to China in the early 1700s. By the 1740s, news of the unassuming plant's value in the Orient spread south to the 13 colonies. Shipping agents bought it for $1 a pound, more than the wholesale value of the rarest furs.
The search for ginseng played a key role in the exploration of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. One noted ginseng collector was Daniel Boone.
Constantine S. Rafinesque (1784-1841), a botanist from Europe, came to the United States to study the herbs of the Mississippi Valley with Indian healers. In 1819, Rafinesque became a botany professor at a college in Kentucky. He coined the term "Eclectic" to describe the kind of medicine he advocated, a combination of European, Asian, Native American, and slave herbalism. Shortly after his death, 19th-century America's most scientific herbalists decided to call themselves the Eclectics.
Samuel Thomson (1760-1843), early America's leading herbalist, studied with a midwife and Native American healers. Around 1800, his daughter became seriously ill. Unsure of his skills, Thomson called a physician, who pronounced her incurable. Then, as the story goes, Thomson cured her with herbs and hot baths.
Thomson detested the mainstream ("regular") physicians of his day, who relied on "heroic medicine" -- bleeding, violent laxatives (cathartics), and mercury. He developed a medical system involving herbs and hot baths. In 1813 he obtained a patent for "Thomson's Improved System of Botanic Practice of Medicine," which allowed him to sell his brand of herbalism nationwide while still retaining its ownership.
Initially, Thomsonian herbalists used 65 herbs and obtained them from their own gardens or from herb growers in their area. Thomson soon realized that he could make even more money by selling prepackaged herbal formulas. He organized his family members into Friendly Botanic Societies, cooperatives that bought his formulas and distributed them around the country. Because Thomson's formulas were part of his patented medical system, they became known as "patent medicines."
As time passed, patent medicines became a major industry. Some were quality products, but many were worthless concoctions of alcohol, opium, and cocaine, sold by hucksters whose outrageous claims eventually spurred Congress to create the Food and Drug Administration.
After Thomson's death in 1843, his medical system fell out of fashion. However, some practitioners preserved it. One such preserver was Dr. John Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, who invented the nation's first health food -- the corn flake -- and founded Kellogg's cereal company. Regardless, Thomsonian medicine was largely replaced by Eclectic herbalism.
Despite the regular physicians' reliance on bleeding, cathartics, and mercury, most 19th-century medicines were herbal. In 1820, two-thirds of the treatments in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, the official list of medicines, were botanical. In 1880, the figure was almost three-quarters.
An Eclectic Revival
In the 1820s, a group of anti-heroic practitioners created the Reformed Medical Society to promote non-heroic, largely herbal healing. The Reformers adopted Rafinesque's term "Eclectic" to describe their herb-based approach and established a medical school, The Eclectic Medical Institute, in Cincinnati.
The Eclectics were scientific herbalists; they experimented with herbs, analyzed them chemically, extracted their active constituents, published their findings in the scientific journals of the day, and were prominent in the early pharmaceutical industry. The Eclectics popularized echinacea, the herbal immune stimulant that today is the nation's top-selling herbal medicine.
Eclectic popularity declined in the 20th century as herbal medicines were largely replaced by pharmaceutical drugs. When the Institute graduated its last class in 1939, Eclectic medicine's scientific herbalism faced extinction.
A handful of Eclectic-inspired naturopaths hung on, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
German Extraction
In 1805, a German chemist extracted the first drug from its herbal source: morphine from the opium poppy. In 1820, another German chemist achieved another first with the synthesis of an organic compound (urea) from inorganic chemicals. Modern pharmacology was born. Early pharmacologists developed drugs largely by modifying chemicals extracted from medicinal plants: aspirin from willow bark, quinine from cinchona, caffeine from coffee, menthol from peppermint, and ephedrine (a decongestant) from Chinese ephedra, among many others.
The Germans became leaders in pharmacology and in medical training. Many Americans went to Germany to attend medical school. German-trained American doctors became harsh critics of U.S. medical education and urged medical schools to reorganize along German lines. Harvard and Johns Hopkins were the first to do so.
The regulars' medical schools adopted the Harvard-Johns Hopkins model and dropped botany in favor of pharmacology. The drugs of the new pharmaceutical industry replaced heroic measures and herbal preparations.
By 1940, every surviving U.S. medical school offered graduate training along Harvard-Hopkins lines, and none offered training in herbal healing.
Herbal Renewal
Herbal medicine almost died in the United States. Then, starting in the late 1960s, many Americans began changing their attitudes about health and healing as they decided to invest their energy in preventing illness, rather than treating it after the fact. Attention to self-care instead of professional care spurred interest in herbal medicine. In addition, as alternative medicine became increasingly popular -- notably Chinese medicine -- traditional herbal approaches attracted new interest.
A 1974 United Nations World Health Organization report concluded that adequate worldwide health care could not be achieved unless nonindustrialized nations were encouraged to nurture traditional herbal healing.
Today, herbal medicine is taking its place alongside mainstream pharmaceuticals. From the 1960s through the 1980s, no mainstream medical schools taught courses on alternative medicine. Today, about 80 do, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.
Until the 1990s, the only coverage mainstream medical journals gave herbal medicine was warnings -- often overblown -- of alleged dire risks of using herbs. Today, leading journals -- including the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the British Medical Journal -- publish articles demonstrating the benefits of healing herbs. Mainstream doctors have become increasingly willing to recommend herbs for some conditions. Among the most often recommended are echinacea for colds, ginger for motion sickness, and St. John's wort for depression.
Problems remain. Under current Food and Drug Administration regulations, herbal medicines inhabit a regulatory limbo. They are classified as "dietary supplements," but many think they should be regulated as over-the-counter drugs. Recently, the National Institutes of Health's Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCAM) sponsored meetings between officials of the FDA and advocates of herbal medicine in hopes of encouraging such a change.
Regardless, herbal medicine is here to stay. Americans currently spend more than $4 billion a year on medicinal herbs. According to a national survey conducted for Prevention magazine, 49 percent of American adults used an herbal medicine during 1998 and 1999, and 24 percent called themselves "regular users."
As we enter the 21st century, it's clear that some of the "newest" medicines are also some of the oldest.
Lesson 1 Assignment
Activity: Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
Using The Healing Herbs , pick five herbs that interest you and five with which you are unfamiliar. Read the discussions of their histories.
Take an inventory of your spice rack. Make a list of the culinary herbs and spices you use frequently, occasionally, and rarely. Discard any old, stale spices and replace them. Then, cook a dish using herbs and spices you don't ordinarily use.
If you have an Indian cookbook, try an Indian recipe -- they typically use many spices. If not, or if you don't care for Indian food, search through your cookbooks for a recipe that calls for at least four herbs and spices.
Savor the process of working with culinary herbs and spices. Notice how they enhance flavor. At the same time, recognize that you're not just enhancing flavor, but also helping to soothe your digestive tract and prevent gastrointestinal infection.
Continue to look for new ways to use a larger number of herbs and spices than you have in the past.
Outside Reading
Your texts for this course will be The New Healing Herbs and The Complete Guide to Herbal Medicines. For more on the history of herbal medicine, see Chapter 1, "From Magic to Medicine," in The New Healing Herbs.
Lesson 1 Review
Activity: Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
1.Culinary herbs and spices were first used primarily for:
A. Flavor enhancement
B. Fragrance enhancement
C. Spoilage prevention
D. Speedier food preparation
2. How did Hippocrates change the Greek view of disease?
A. He promoted the Chinese view of yin and yang
B. He said that micro-organisms cause disease
C. He said those who were ill should be quarantined
D. He said disease was caused not by the gods but by environmental forces
3. Throughout history, which group has produced the vast majority of herbalists?
A. Priests
B. University-trained doctors
C. Women
D. Apothecaries
4. What did Benedictine monks introduce into Europe?
A. Monasteries
B. Tinctures
C. Ginger
D. Turmeric
5. What did women burned as witches have in common?
A. They were herbalists
B. They were elderly
C. They were atheists
D. They were lesbians
6. What is the central thesis of the Doctrine of Signatures?
A. That a doctor's signature must be legible
B. That a plant's physical appearance signals its medical value
C. That growers of medicinal herbs should guarantee their produce by signing purity declarations
D. That apothecaries could only fill herbal prescriptions that had two doctors' signatures
7. Who was England's most famous early herbalist?
A. Nicholas Culpeper
B. King James I
C. John Parkinson
D. William Withering
8. What attracted American colonists to Native American herbal medicine?
A. It was inexpensive
B. It caused no side effects
C. Native Americans promoted it effectively
D. In general, Native Americans seemed healthier than white settlers
9. The 19th-century Eclectics were the forerunners of which group of clinicians?
A. Naturopaths
B. Osteopaths
C. Chiropractors
D. Faith healers
Answers will appear in next post.
Barnes & Noble Universtity free online class "Exploring Herbal Medicine"
Each lesson has several topics with the lecture and discussion for each topic. Following that is a short assignment, then a review with questions and then the answers to the review.
Those of you who are familiar with herbs, please help us amatuers understand our studies. Please join us in our discussion, even if you aren't taking the course.
The first lesson goes into the history of herbs.
Lesson 1 : Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
Topic 1: Hiding in Plain Sight: Your Spice Rack Pharmacy
Topic 2: Shen Nung, King Asoka, Imhotep, Aesculapius, and Hippocrates
Topic 3: Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and the Wise Women
Topic 4: Arabs, Monks, Hildegard of Bingen, and "Witches"
Topic 5: Spices, Signatures, Herbals, and an Old Shropshire Woman
Topic 6: Herbal Medicine in the U.S.
Lesson 1 Topic 1
Lecture and Discussion
Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Your Spice Rack Pharmacy
Even if you're not "into" herbal medicine, chances are that you already have a dozen or so medicinal herbs in your home. All culinary herbs and spices are medicinal. In fact, to our ancient ancestors, their flavor enhancement was incidental to their primary benefit: food preservation.
Our ancestors wrapped meats in aromatic herbs to preserve them, which led to other astonishing discoveries. Those who ate preservative herbs along with meats suffered less illness and, as an added benefit, the meats tasted better.
Today we know that the oils that give aromatic herbs their fragrance and flavor contain antimicrobial compounds that kill many food-spoiling, disease-causing microorganisms. Many culinary herbs and spices are also "antispasmodic," meaning that they help relax the digestive tract.
Lesson 1 Topic 2
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Shen Nung, King Asoka, Imhotep, Aesculapius, and Hippocrates
According to Chinese mythology, legendary emperor and sage Shen Nung invented agriculture around 3400 B.C. and discovered that many plants have medicinal value.
Chinese herbalists believe Shen Nung to be the author of China's first great herbal, or medicinal herb guide. The text listed 237 herbal prescriptions using dozens of herbs including ephedra, rhubarb, and opium poppy.
Over the centuries, the list of official Chinese herb formulas expanded to 11,000. Starting around the 18th century, this number was reduced and Chinese medicine now employs about 300 herbs, 150 of which are now considered indispensable, including Chinese angelica (dang-gui), burdock, chrysanthemum, cinnamon, dandelion, garlic, gentian, ginger, ginseng, hawthorn, licorice, lotus, mint, rhubarb, scullcap, senna, and tea.
Ancient Indians called their medicine Ayurveda, from two Sanskrit words, ayur ("life") and veda ("knowledge"). Ayurvedic medicine developed from the Vedas, India's four books of classic wisdom, which include formulas for medicines using 67 medicinal herbs including ginger, cinnamon, and senna. The first Ayurvedic medical encyclopedia was written around 700 B.C. (four centuries before Hippocrates), and listed 500 herbal formulas.
In 250 B.C., India's King Asoka converted to Buddhism and launched a 1,000-year golden age of Ayurvedic medicine. Ayurvedic herbalists were the first to use Rauwolfia serpentina, the source of resperine, used until recently in Western medicine to manage high blood pressure.
The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (today Iraq) was home successively to the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. One of the world's oldest surviving prescriptions is a Sumerian clay tablet from around 2100 B.C. that references several herbs, including myrrh, cypress, and opium poppy.
The Assyrians built on Sumerian medicine. Assyria was strategically placed along the ancient Spice Route, from Asia to Egypt. Archeologists have unearthed the remains of an Assyrian pharmacy that stocked 230 herbs, including almond, anise, caraway, coriander, juniper, saffron, sesame, turmeric, and willow.
The spice trade also played a major role in Babylonian and Persian medicine.
In 1874, the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers discovered the world's oldest surviving medical text, a 65-foot papyrus dated from around 1500 B.C. The Ebers Papyrus listed 876 herbal formulas from more than 500 plants, including aloe, caraway, castor, chamomile, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, fennel, fenugreek, garlic, gentian, ginger, juniper, mint, myrrh, opium poppy, onions, sesame, saffron, sage, and thyme -- about one-third of the herbs in today's Western herbal medicine.
The most notable Egyptian physician was Imhotep, who eventually became deified. The Egyptians imported enormous quantities of aromatic herbs for perfumes, embalming mixtures, and medicines. But they had even greater affection for garlic and onion. The Egyptians believed garlic and onion strengthened the body and prevented disease (a view supported by modern science).
The early Greeks viewed illness as a divine curse and prayed to Apollo, god of medicine, for recovery. In Greek mythology, Apollo had a son named Aesculapius, a physician-god who was much like Imhotep. (Aesculapius treated the sick with the help of his daughters, Hygeia and Panacea. Hygeia, source of our word "hygiene," represented healthy living, while Panacea, whose name translates as "cure all," treated disease.)
Snakes, sacred to Aesculapius, slithered freely around his temple grounds. Snakes' tongues became a symbol of healing and remained an ingredient in medicinal potions well into the Middle Ages. Aesculapius was often pictured carrying a staff with a snake wrapped around it, and the snake-staff combination became the cadeuceus, the symbol of medicine.
Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), the father of Western medicine, was born to an Aesculapian family on the island of Kos, off the coast of Turkey. Hippocrates rebelled against Aesculapius by secularizing Greek medicine. He believed diseases came not from the gods, but from natural causes. Hippocrates' students attributed the use of 350 medicinal plants to him, among them mint, rosemary, thyme, anise, clove, cinnamon, and burdock.
Lesson 1 Topic 3
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and the Wise Women
Pedanius Dioscorides (A.D. 40-90) was the first true medical botanist and, although he was Greek, served as a physician in the Roman army. In A.D. 78, he published De Materia Medica ("On Medicines"), Europe's first real guide to herbal medicine. It discussed 600 plants, including aloe, anise, chamomile, cinnamon, dill, marjoram, poppy, rhubarb, and thyme.
De Materia Medica remained a standard medical reference for 1,500 years. Virtually every herbal published through the 17th century referred to it.
In Rome, Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) busily compiled ancient scientific knowledge into his 37-volume Historia Naturalis ("Natural History"). Volumes 20 through 27 specifically covered medicinal herbs. Many of Pliny's herbal recommendations guided physicians for centuries.
Fifty years after Pliny, Galen (A.D. 131-200) became Rome's leading physician, and eventually became the physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. At a time when folk midwife-herbalists used single herbs or formulas with only a few ingredients, Galen insisted on complex concoctions of herbs, animal parts, and minerals called "galenicals." As the centuries passed, Europe's nobility favored costly galenicals, while the peasantry stuck to single herbs or simple formulas, which then became known as "simples."
From ancient times and even into the present day, while male physicians ministered to the rich and royal and wrote the classic texts, folk herbalists -- overwhelmingly women -- took care of everyone else. Women healers have gone by many names: midwives, wise women, green women, witches, old wives, and nurses. People like Galen dismissed them as charlatans. We still hear echoes of that prejudice today when physicians and researchers dismiss folk medical wisdom as "old wives' tales."
Ancient physicians shunned female folk herbalists, but at the same time officially recognized women's dominance in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology. Many herbs were used to calm the womb, trigger menstruation, induce abortion, promote or dry up mothers' milk, and treat infant colic and infectious diarrhea.
Lesson 1 Topic 4
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Arabs, Monks, Hildegard of Bingen, and "Witches"
Upon Rome's collapse, Arab civilization stepped up to fill the intellectual void.
Ibn-Sina, also known as Avicenna (A.D. 980-1037), was the leading Arab physician. A follower of Galen, he wrote the Canon Of Medicine, the medical Bible of the West for 600 years. Book Two of the text dealt with herbs, including nutmeg, senna, sandalwood, rhubarb, myrrh, cinnamon, clove, and rosewater.
The Arabs simplified Galen's medicines and developed pharmacy as a field distinct from medicine. They were also the first to use alcohol medicinally with their invention of herbal tinctures (alcohol extracts).
After the fall of Rome, European medicine was dominated by the Catholic Church, which adopted the pre-Hippocratic Greek belief that illness was punishment from God and treatable only by prayer and penance. However, Catholic monks preserved Greco-Roman herbalism by copying the ancient texts. The Benedictine monks were the first Europeans to adopt the Arab practice of making tinctures. They flavored wine with digestion-promoting herbs and created the forerunners of today's liqueurs, one of which is still known as Benedictine.
Charlemagne (A.D. 742-814) was so impressed by the Benedictines' herb gardens and practice of herbal medicine ("physic"), he ordered all the monasteries in his empire to plant "physic gardens" to ensure an adequate supply of medicines throughout his realm.
The most notable Benedictine herbalist was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Abbess of the Rupertsburg convent in the German Rhineland. Hildegard compiled herbal formulas and her book, Hildegard 's Medicine, combined mystical Catholicism and early German folk medicine with her own extensive herbal experience. Her favorite herbs included aloe, apple, basil, bay, blackberry, caraway, celery, clove, dill, fennel, garlic, hyssop, licorice, marjoram, myrrh, nettle, nutmeg, onion, oregano, parsley, raspberry, rosemary, rue, thyme, and watercress.
Hildegard was also the only medieval woman who left any account of "wise women" healing practices. Many of her recommendations were quite sensible. She promoted a balanced diet and tooth-brushing with aloe and myrrh, both of which have antibacterial, decay-preventing properties.
Hildegard was lucky to have lived in the 11th century, for if she had practiced herbalism from 1300 to 1650, she probably would have been burned as a witch.
It is not clear what caused Europe's 350 years of witch-hunts. A recent theory proposes that European rulers and the Catholic Church became alarmed by a decline in population and wanted to stop wise women midwife/herbalists from prescribing herbal contraceptives and abortifacients. The leading medieval contraceptive-abortifacients were taken after intercourse -- "morning-after" plants, in modern parlance. The most popular were pennyroyal, artemisia, and rue. Modern research shows that all three stimulate uterine contractions and abortion.
After 1300 A.D. the image of the folk herbalist changed from helpful wise woman to evil witch. Accusations of "sexual intercourse with the Devil" were typically accompanied by testimony that the alleged witch practiced herbal medicine and made healing mixtures, cosmetics, love potions, aphrodisiacs, abortifacients, and poisons.
Accusations of poisoning were particularly implicative. It is possible that some female herbalists dabbled in herbal assassination, which had been practiced since ancient times. Socrates, for example, was put to death by being forced to drink poison hemlock. But this was the era before the discovery of the "dose-response relationship," the idea that the greater the dose, the greater the effect. Many so-called "witches' plants," poisonous in large amounts, caused no harm in therapeutic or cosmetic amounts. One plant associated with witchcraft was "witch's bells," large amounts of which are poisonous, though small amounts stimulate the heart. After the witch-hunt era, its name was changed to foxglove and it became the source of digitalis, a drug used to treat congestive heart failure.
After the witch-hunts, the saintly Hildegard was forgotten and replaced by the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth, who threw mandrake, belladonna, and other poisonous herbs into their bubbling cauldron. The witch-hunts failed to eradicate women's herbalism, but did succeed in driving it underground.
Lesson 1 Topic 5
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Spices, Signatures, Herbals, and an Old Shropshire Woman
The fall of Rome devastated the spice trade. Although Arab merchants continued importing Asian herbs into Europe, the commerce declined and prices soared. Then came the Crusades, from 1095 until 1291 A.D. Once the Crusaders tasted Asian spices in the Middle East, they returned home with cravings for spices.
The ancient Spice Routes slowly reopened, and by 1400 A.D. Venice and Genoa were major spice importation centers. Not surprisingly, Italy was also a leader in herbal medicine.
Onward Exploration
During the 1400s, the Mongols, supporters of the trade with Europe, lost Western Asia to the Ottoman Turks and the trade routes were closed. In Venice and Genoa, herbs and spice merchants grew desperate for new avenues to the East. If the world were round, as some claimed, it might be possible to sail west across the Atlantic and reach the Indies. Though Christopher Columbus, who hailed from Genoa, never reached the East Indies, he did return from the New World with allspice and red pepper, which the Caribbean Indians called kian, or, cayenne.
Early world exploration was dominated by the Portuguese and Dutch, who monopolized the sea route around Africa to India and the Spice Islands (Indonesia). Their primary trades were in cinnamon, cloves, tea, and black pepper.
Meanwhile, the Spanish concentrated on the New World and its gold. In 1519, Hernando Cortez watched Mexico's Aztec ruler, Montezuma, toast Cortez's arrival by sipping from a golden goblet. Cortez coveted the goblet, but the herbal beverage it contained, chocolatl (chocolate), eventually became more important than the Aztec's gold. In addition to chocolate, Spanish conquistadors returned home with corn, tobacco, potatoes, carrots, strawberries, lima beans, tomatoes, sarsaparilla, passionflower, and, the most important new medicinal herb of all, cinchona (Jesuit or Peruvian bark). Cinchona was the first effective treatment for malaria and became the source of the anti-malarial drug, quinine.
The British were minor players in the world spice trade until 1599, when London merchants pooled their capital and established the British East India Company. The firm began importing pepper and other culinary and medicinal herbs directly from India.
Doctrine of Signatures
Around 1500, Italian philosophers conceived the first new medical philosophy since ancient Roman times, the Doctrine of Signatures, which claimed that a plant's physical appearance revealed its medical value. For example, since walnut shells resemble skulls, and walnuts look like brains, walnuts were used to treat headaches.
One champion of the new Doctrine was Paracelsus (1493-1541). Paracelsus taught at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in the 1520s. As strange as it sounds today, the Doctrine was based on experience with healing herbs. For instance, garlic and onion had been used for centuries as decongestants. Their leaves are hollow; air passes through them. So, under the Doctrine of Signatures, any plant with hollow leaves or stems was considered a respiratory remedy. Unfortunately, the Doctrine of Signatures badly overgeneralized historical experience with herbs.
The Doctrine of Signatures quickly became the new medical dogma. Bile has a yellowish tinge; jaundice, a liver problem, turns the skin yellow. Under the Doctrine, any yellow flower or root was considered a liver medicine. Similarly, any plant with long, snaking roots was used to treat snakebites. Plants with heart-shaped leaves were considered heart remedies. Juicy plants were used as diuretics and lactation promoters.
Paracelsus also discovered the dose-response relationship. "It depends only on the dose," he wrote, "whether a poison is a poison or not." This insight allowed Paracelsus to introduce small doses of many potentially toxic minerals into medicine, including arsenic, sulfur, lead, antimony, and particularly mercury, originally used to treat syphilis, and then later many other diseases. In time, physicians came to view mercury as a panacea.
Medicine for the Privileged
With the invention of the printing press in the 1450s, herbals proliferated and England's university-trained physicians began to fear the loss of their medical monopoly. The physicians lobbied their influential patients in the British Court in the attempt to outlaw the practice of medicine by the "rogues, horse-gelders, rat catchers, idiots, and witches" and restrict it to those who had been university-trained.
In a 1511 decree, Henry VIII reserved the practice of medicine for university-trained physicians and barber/surgeons who had completed apprenticeships. Anyone else had to pass a test administered in Latin by the Bishop of London and a committee of prominent doctors. Of course, folk herbalists could not read Latin. Many didn't read English. While some stopped practicing, most went underground and practiced in secret.
Henry's edict eventually led to a major shortage of doctors, and, in 1543, he rescinded it with the Herbalists' Charter. The Charter came just one year after German botanist Leonhard Fuchs (1501-1566) published De Historia Stirpium ("On Plants"), the first original book of medical botany since Dioscorides' treatise almost 1500 years earlier. It discussed 500 healing herbs, including 100 from the New World.
In 1546, the University of Padua in Italy planted the first academic botanical garden, which helped launch the modern science of botany. In time, most major universities and many physicians and apothecaries planted their own physic gardens.
The most prominent early British herbalist was John Gerard (1545-1612), who established a noted physic garden in Fetter Lane, London. The garden contained more than 1,000 species, including England's first potatoes. In 1586, Gerard was appointed curator of the College of Physicians' Physic Garden and soon after became herbalist to King James I. In 1597, Gerard published his Herball Or Generall Historie Of Plantes, in which he displayed the College of Physicians' characteristic contempt for "foolish women."
John Parkinson (1567-1650) was another pioneering British herbalist. In 1640 he published Theatrum Botanicum ("The Theatre of Plants"), which was subtitled The Universall And Complete Herball. The subtitle proved to be no understatement as the 1,800-page book discussed 3,800 plants, which Parkinson organized into 17 "Classes or Tribes."
Many scientists proposed similar systems, but none stuck until 1737 when Swedish naturalist Carl Linne, also known as Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), developed the Latin binomial genus-and-species system we still use today.
As university medicine slowly became more scientific, leading physicians stopped growing their own herbs and turned instead to the growing number of pharmacists (apothecaries), who used mortars and pestles to grind healing herbs into medicinally usable powders. Not coincidentally, the mortar and pestle became the symbol of pharmacy.
Nicholas Culpeper
During the 17th century, England's most influential herbalist was Nicholas Culpeper. His Complete Herbal And English Physician, first published in 1652, has been in print from the time of its original publication in more than 100 editions -- a record surpassed only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
Egotistical and brash, Culpeper came of age during the English Civil War (1642-1648). Though he came from an aristocratic family, Culpeper was a Puritan and fought for Cromwell. He took a musket ball in the chest, which influenced his decision to study medicine.
Culpeper's fiancée was killed when lightning struck her carriage on her way to their elopement. Beside himself with grief, Culpeper left Cambridge and became an apothecary's apprentice.
Culpeper was an anomaly. He could read Greek and Latin as well as the physicians, and he resented the snobbery of former classmates who became doctors and looked down on apothecaries. Furthermore, as a Puritan, he was outraged that the monarchist College of Physicians ignored the medical needs of the largely Puritan lower classes. Culpeper's solution was to become England's medical Robin Hood.
In 1649, Culpeper translated the College of Physicians' Latin manual, the Pharmacopoiea Londinensis, into English and called it The London Dispensatory and Physical Directory. The Directory gave apothecaries and those without knowledge of Latin their first look at the 1,600 simples and 1,100 other formulas that represented the cutting edge of British medicine. While Culpeper's audacity earned him the physicians' undying hatred, it also earned him the undying respect and admiration of the apothecaries, midwives, and other common people who so desired access to professional medical information.
Culpeper's apothecary shop in Spitalfields (near London) became wildly popular, and he often treated the poor for free.
To make herbal medicine even more accessible, Culpeper published Herbal in 1652. It was revolutionary because it gave equal weight to the official herbalism of the ancient masters and the homegrown folk wisdom of England's "country people."
Culpeper's problem was that he rarely met an herb he didn't consider a panacea. His promotion of every herb for every ill has haunted herbalism ever since.
William Withering
In 1775, about 100 years after the last witch-hunt, 34-year-old William Withering was a doctor in Stafford, England, and an avid medical botanist. In the course of his practice, he heard rumors of an "old Shropshire woman" who could treat "dropsy," that era's term for the disease we now call congestive heart failure. Withering located the woman, a folk herbalist, who described her "secret family recipe," which contained 20 herbs. Withering realized that the active ingredient was foxglove, and after using the treatment himself, he gained a reputation for treating congestive heart failure.
Soon after, Withering published his Account Of The Foxglove And Its Medical Uses, which recounted how he was introduced to the plant and further summarized his results in 163 cases. The drug derived from foxglove, digitalis, has only recently been surpassed by other medications as a treatment for congestive heart failure.
Lesson 1 Topic 6
Lecture and Discussion
This lesson explores the fascinating history of herbal medicine and provides perspective on the medicinal use of herbs today.
Herbal Medicine in the U.S.
Europeans considered Native Americans "ignorant savages" -- except when it came to health and medicine. Many colonists, all too familiar with the plagues, pestilence, and suffering they witnessed and experienced in Europe, became eager students of Indian herbal medicine.
In 1536, French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed to the site of present-day Quebec. Within a few months, 25 of his 100 men had died of "the sailors' disease" (scurvy), and most of the rest were gravely ill. Fortunately for Cartier, a Native American gave the sickly explorers a tea brewed from yellow cedar bark and leaves. Everyone recovered. Later the tea was shown to contain Vitamin C, which prevents and cures scurvy.
Native Americans introduced white settlers to many valuable herbs: black cohosh, black haw, boneset, cascara sagrada, echinacea, chaparral, goldenseal, lobelia, Oregon grape, sarsaparilla, slippery elm, wild cherry, and witch hazel.
Exploration and Exportation
Herbs were also a major colonial export. Furs, tobacco, and cotton generated the most money, but nothing, pound for pound, beat ginseng -- the herb prized in Asia as the ultimate tonic. French Jesuits began shipping Canadian ginseng to China in the early 1700s. By the 1740s, news of the unassuming plant's value in the Orient spread south to the 13 colonies. Shipping agents bought it for $1 a pound, more than the wholesale value of the rarest furs.
The search for ginseng played a key role in the exploration of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. One noted ginseng collector was Daniel Boone.
Constantine S. Rafinesque (1784-1841), a botanist from Europe, came to the United States to study the herbs of the Mississippi Valley with Indian healers. In 1819, Rafinesque became a botany professor at a college in Kentucky. He coined the term "Eclectic" to describe the kind of medicine he advocated, a combination of European, Asian, Native American, and slave herbalism. Shortly after his death, 19th-century America's most scientific herbalists decided to call themselves the Eclectics.
Samuel Thomson (1760-1843), early America's leading herbalist, studied with a midwife and Native American healers. Around 1800, his daughter became seriously ill. Unsure of his skills, Thomson called a physician, who pronounced her incurable. Then, as the story goes, Thomson cured her with herbs and hot baths.
Thomson detested the mainstream ("regular") physicians of his day, who relied on "heroic medicine" -- bleeding, violent laxatives (cathartics), and mercury. He developed a medical system involving herbs and hot baths. In 1813 he obtained a patent for "Thomson's Improved System of Botanic Practice of Medicine," which allowed him to sell his brand of herbalism nationwide while still retaining its ownership.
Initially, Thomsonian herbalists used 65 herbs and obtained them from their own gardens or from herb growers in their area. Thomson soon realized that he could make even more money by selling prepackaged herbal formulas. He organized his family members into Friendly Botanic Societies, cooperatives that bought his formulas and distributed them around the country. Because Thomson's formulas were part of his patented medical system, they became known as "patent medicines."
As time passed, patent medicines became a major industry. Some were quality products, but many were worthless concoctions of alcohol, opium, and cocaine, sold by hucksters whose outrageous claims eventually spurred Congress to create the Food and Drug Administration.
After Thomson's death in 1843, his medical system fell out of fashion. However, some practitioners preserved it. One such preserver was Dr. John Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, who invented the nation's first health food -- the corn flake -- and founded Kellogg's cereal company. Regardless, Thomsonian medicine was largely replaced by Eclectic herbalism.
Despite the regular physicians' reliance on bleeding, cathartics, and mercury, most 19th-century medicines were herbal. In 1820, two-thirds of the treatments in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, the official list of medicines, were botanical. In 1880, the figure was almost three-quarters.
An Eclectic Revival
In the 1820s, a group of anti-heroic practitioners created the Reformed Medical Society to promote non-heroic, largely herbal healing. The Reformers adopted Rafinesque's term "Eclectic" to describe their herb-based approach and established a medical school, The Eclectic Medical Institute, in Cincinnati.
The Eclectics were scientific herbalists; they experimented with herbs, analyzed them chemically, extracted their active constituents, published their findings in the scientific journals of the day, and were prominent in the early pharmaceutical industry. The Eclectics popularized echinacea, the herbal immune stimulant that today is the nation's top-selling herbal medicine.
Eclectic popularity declined in the 20th century as herbal medicines were largely replaced by pharmaceutical drugs. When the Institute graduated its last class in 1939, Eclectic medicine's scientific herbalism faced extinction.
A handful of Eclectic-inspired naturopaths hung on, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
German Extraction
In 1805, a German chemist extracted the first drug from its herbal source: morphine from the opium poppy. In 1820, another German chemist achieved another first with the synthesis of an organic compound (urea) from inorganic chemicals. Modern pharmacology was born. Early pharmacologists developed drugs largely by modifying chemicals extracted from medicinal plants: aspirin from willow bark, quinine from cinchona, caffeine from coffee, menthol from peppermint, and ephedrine (a decongestant) from Chinese ephedra, among many others.
The Germans became leaders in pharmacology and in medical training. Many Americans went to Germany to attend medical school. German-trained American doctors became harsh critics of U.S. medical education and urged medical schools to reorganize along German lines. Harvard and Johns Hopkins were the first to do so.
The regulars' medical schools adopted the Harvard-Johns Hopkins model and dropped botany in favor of pharmacology. The drugs of the new pharmaceutical industry replaced heroic measures and herbal preparations.
By 1940, every surviving U.S. medical school offered graduate training along Harvard-Hopkins lines, and none offered training in herbal healing.
Herbal Renewal
Herbal medicine almost died in the United States. Then, starting in the late 1960s, many Americans began changing their attitudes about health and healing as they decided to invest their energy in preventing illness, rather than treating it after the fact. Attention to self-care instead of professional care spurred interest in herbal medicine. In addition, as alternative medicine became increasingly popular -- notably Chinese medicine -- traditional herbal approaches attracted new interest.
A 1974 United Nations World Health Organization report concluded that adequate worldwide health care could not be achieved unless nonindustrialized nations were encouraged to nurture traditional herbal healing.
Today, herbal medicine is taking its place alongside mainstream pharmaceuticals. From the 1960s through the 1980s, no mainstream medical schools taught courses on alternative medicine. Today, about 80 do, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.
Until the 1990s, the only coverage mainstream medical journals gave herbal medicine was warnings -- often overblown -- of alleged dire risks of using herbs. Today, leading journals -- including the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the British Medical Journal -- publish articles demonstrating the benefits of healing herbs. Mainstream doctors have become increasingly willing to recommend herbs for some conditions. Among the most often recommended are echinacea for colds, ginger for motion sickness, and St. John's wort for depression.
Problems remain. Under current Food and Drug Administration regulations, herbal medicines inhabit a regulatory limbo. They are classified as "dietary supplements," but many think they should be regulated as over-the-counter drugs. Recently, the National Institutes of Health's Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCAM) sponsored meetings between officials of the FDA and advocates of herbal medicine in hopes of encouraging such a change.
Regardless, herbal medicine is here to stay. Americans currently spend more than $4 billion a year on medicinal herbs. According to a national survey conducted for Prevention magazine, 49 percent of American adults used an herbal medicine during 1998 and 1999, and 24 percent called themselves "regular users."
As we enter the 21st century, it's clear that some of the "newest" medicines are also some of the oldest.
Lesson 1 Assignment
Activity: Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
Using The Healing Herbs , pick five herbs that interest you and five with which you are unfamiliar. Read the discussions of their histories.
Take an inventory of your spice rack. Make a list of the culinary herbs and spices you use frequently, occasionally, and rarely. Discard any old, stale spices and replace them. Then, cook a dish using herbs and spices you don't ordinarily use.
If you have an Indian cookbook, try an Indian recipe -- they typically use many spices. If not, or if you don't care for Indian food, search through your cookbooks for a recipe that calls for at least four herbs and spices.
Savor the process of working with culinary herbs and spices. Notice how they enhance flavor. At the same time, recognize that you're not just enhancing flavor, but also helping to soothe your digestive tract and prevent gastrointestinal infection.
Continue to look for new ways to use a larger number of herbs and spices than you have in the past.
Outside Reading
Your texts for this course will be The New Healing Herbs and The Complete Guide to Herbal Medicines. For more on the history of herbal medicine, see Chapter 1, "From Magic to Medicine," in The New Healing Herbs.
Lesson 1 Review
Activity: Herbal Medicine Through the Ages
1.Culinary herbs and spices were first used primarily for:
A. Flavor enhancement
B. Fragrance enhancement
C. Spoilage prevention
D. Speedier food preparation
2. How did Hippocrates change the Greek view of disease?
A. He promoted the Chinese view of yin and yang
B. He said that micro-organisms cause disease
C. He said those who were ill should be quarantined
D. He said disease was caused not by the gods but by environmental forces
3. Throughout history, which group has produced the vast majority of herbalists?
A. Priests
B. University-trained doctors
C. Women
D. Apothecaries
4. What did Benedictine monks introduce into Europe?
A. Monasteries
B. Tinctures
C. Ginger
D. Turmeric
5. What did women burned as witches have in common?
A. They were herbalists
B. They were elderly
C. They were atheists
D. They were lesbians
6. What is the central thesis of the Doctrine of Signatures?
A. That a doctor's signature must be legible
B. That a plant's physical appearance signals its medical value
C. That growers of medicinal herbs should guarantee their produce by signing purity declarations
D. That apothecaries could only fill herbal prescriptions that had two doctors' signatures
7. Who was England's most famous early herbalist?
A. Nicholas Culpeper
B. King James I
C. John Parkinson
D. William Withering
8. What attracted American colonists to Native American herbal medicine?
A. It was inexpensive
B. It caused no side effects
C. Native Americans promoted it effectively
D. In general, Native Americans seemed healthier than white settlers
9. The 19th-century Eclectics were the forerunners of which group of clinicians?
A. Naturopaths
B. Osteopaths
C. Chiropractors
D. Faith healers
Answers will appear in next post.
Or, someone else is welcome to post them too. Everytime it rains real hard I lose my internet connections. It will stay connected for just a couple minutes (or seconds) at a time. Wish I had high speed.