Materia medica is a Latin term from the history of pharmacy for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing. The term derives from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica, 'On medical material'.
Herbal medicine is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. With worldwide research into pharmacology, some herbal medicines have been translated into modern remedies, such as the anti-malarial group of drugs called artemisinin isolated from Artemisia annua, a herb that was known in Chinese medicine to treat fever. There is limited scientific evidence for the safety and efficacy of many plants used in 21st-century herbalism, which generally does not provide standards for purity or dosage. The scope of herbal medicine sometimes include fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts.
Traditional medicine comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the era of modern medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as "the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement and treatment of physical and mental illness". Traditional medicine is often contrasted with scientific medicine.
Asplenium is a genus of about 700 species of ferns, often treated as the only genus in the family Aspleniaceae, though other authors consider Hymenasplenium separate, based on molecular phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences, a different chromosome count, and structural differences in the rhizomes. The type species for the genus is Asplenium marinum.
In the Middle Ages, the medicine of Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behaviour, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them. A herbal may also classify the plants it describes, may give recipes for herbal extracts, tinctures, or potions, and sometimes include mineral and animal medicaments in addition to those obtained from plants. Herbals were often illustrated to assist plant identification.
Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people. An ethnobotanist thus strives to document the local customs involving the practical uses of local flora for many aspects of life, such as plants as medicines, foods, intoxicants and clothing. Richard Evans Schultes, often referred to as the "father of ethnobotany", explained the discipline in this way:
Ethnobotany simply means investigating plants used by primitive societies in various parts of the world.
Aristolochia is a large plant genus with over 500 species that is the type genus of the family Aristolochiaceae. Its members are commonly known as birthwort, pipevine or Dutchman's pipe and are widespread and occur in the most diverse climates. Some species, like A. utriformis and A. westlandii, are threatened with extinction.
Chelidonium majus, the greater celandine, is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the poppy family Papaveraceae. One of two species in the genus Chelidonium, it is native to Europe and western Asia and introduced widely in North America.
Albularyo or albulario is a Filipino term for a witch doctor, folk healer or medicine man, derived from Spanish herbolario (herbalist). They practice folk medicine and use medicinal plants in their trade.
Medicine in ancient Rome was highly influenced by ancient Greek medicine, but also developed new practices through knowledge of the Hippocratic Corpus combined with use of the treatment of diet, regimen, along with surgical procedures. This was most notably seen through the works of two of the prominent Greek physicians, Dioscorides and Galen, who practiced medicine and recorded their discoveries. This is contrary to two other physicians like Soranus of Ephesus and Asclepiades of Bithynia, who practiced medicine both in outside territories and in ancient Roman territory, subsequently. Dioscorides was a Roman army physician, Soranus was a representative for the Methodic school of medicine, Galen performed public demonstrations, and Asclepiades was a leading Roman physician. These four physicians all had knowledge of medicine, ailments, and treatments that were healing, long lasting and influential to human history.
Rosemary Gladstar is an American herbalist, author and educator and known as the godmother of modern herbalism.
Yorùbá medicine, or egbòogi, is an Yoruba system of herbalism practiced primarily in West Africa and the Caribbean.
Aztec medicine concerns the body of knowledge, belief and ritual surrounding human health and sickness, as observed among the Nahuatl-speaking people in the Aztec realm of central Mexico. The Aztecs knew of and used an extensive inventory consisting of hundreds of different medicinal herbs and plants. A variety of indigenous Nahua and Novohispanic written works survived from the conquest and later colonial periods that describe aspects of the Aztec system and practice of medicine and its remedies, incantations, practical administration, and cultural underpinnings. Elements of traditional medicinal practices and beliefs are still found among modern-day Nahua communities, often intermixed with European or other later influences.
The history of pharmacy as a modern and independent science dates back to the first third of the 19th century. Before then, pharmacy evolved from antiquity as part of medicine. The history of pharmacy coincides well with the history of medicine, but it's important that there is a distinction between the two topics. Pharmaceuticals is one of the most-researched fields in the academic industry, but the history surrounding that particular topic is sparse compared to the impact its made world-wide. Before the advent of pharmacists, there existed apothecaries that worked alongside priests and physicians in regard to patient care.
The Physician Preparing an Elixir is a miniature on a folio from an illustrated manuscript copy, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of De Materia Medica, a large herbal or work on the (mostly) medical uses of plants originally written by the ancient Greco-Roman physician, Pedanius Dioscorides, in the first century AD. This page of the manuscript, dated 1224 AD, is made from paper, sized 24.8 cm wide and 33.2 cm long, and is decorated by opaque watercolor, ink, and gold detailing. It is visually split into three horizontal portions from the top of the page to the bottom; the top of the page is dominated by two lines of Arabic script, followed by the image and then five more lines of text in Arabic. The writing below the image is predominantly black with the exception of one line, which is written in red ink and is therefore highlighted to the viewer. The page is usually not on display.
The history of herbalism is closely tied with the history of medicine from prehistoric times up until the development of the germ theory of disease in the 19th century. Modern medicine from the 19th century to today has been based on evidence gathered using the scientific method. Evidence-based use of pharmaceutical drugs, often derived from medicinal plants, has largely replaced herbal treatments in modern health care. However, many people continue to employ various forms of traditional or alternative medicine. These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food-borne pathogens.
William Coles (1626–1662), botanist, also known as William Cole, was born in 1626 at Adderbury, Oxfordshire, being the son of John Cole. He is known for the doctrine of signatures of medicinal herbs or 'simples', whereby the plant has some attribute which shows the botanist what its use may be.
De materia medica is a pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants and the medicines that can be obtained from them. The five-volume work was written between 50 and 70 CE by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the Roman army. It was widely read for more than 1,500 years until supplanted by revised herbals in the Renaissance, making it one of the longest-lasting of all natural history and pharmacology books.
