The History of Western Herbal Medicine

The History of Western Herbal Medicine

Over 5000yrs ago in Mesopotamia, India, China, and Egypt the oral tradition of medicine started to be written down. We pick up the story with the Ancient Greeks in the 1st Century BC, when Hippocrates (known as the ‘Father of Medicine’) began treating the body as a whole and not just a series of parts. He is known for the saying ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food’.

The Greeks continued to be at the forefront of medical thought, but with the expansion of the Roman Empire medical practices developed at pace. During the British ‘Dark Ages’ medical knowledge was kept alive in the Monastic physic gardens.

Between the 15th and 17th centuries the explosion of printing made written accounts of herbal practice much more widely available. In the 1600’s, Nicholas Culpeper, an English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer catalogued hundreds of outdoor medicinal herbs. He was a passionate and practical advocate of accessible herbalism and medicine, offering free treatment consisting mostly of herbal remedies to anyone in need. Culpeper was committed to making medical information available to all by translating into and writing his own texts in English and distributing his books at very low cost.

Whilst today herbalism may have separated from conventional medicine, it certainly never went away. As folk medicine, traditional healing, or alternative care, many different types of herbal practice have continued to thrive.

Herbalism began a resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s, and its acceptance and popularity has slowly gained momentum in the last decades. The use of herbs has now begun to enter conventional medicine as part of the integrative or functional medicine movement, and herbs are often used by licensed practitioners of osteopathic or naturopathic medicine. And, of course, herbs are available all around us, not only at supermarkets but in our gardens and backyards!