Archaeological evidence shows that herbal medicine dates back 60,000 years to the Paleolithic age. Some of the earliest written records of herbal medicine include a 5000-year-old Sumerian clay slab mentioning 250 plants and Egypt's Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BC describing over 700 plant-based compounds. Ancient Greek, Chinese, Indian, and Arab cultures also documented medicinal plants in early herbals and texts, with the Sushruta Samhita from 6th century BC India describing 700 medicinal plants. Throughout history, monasteries, physicians, and civilizations identified healing properties of plants and passed this knowledge between societies, upgrading old uses and discovering new ones to develop herbal medicine

1. Herbal Cultivation
History of Herbal Medicine
Herbal Medicine refers to the use of plant or plant extracts for medicinal purposes. It is
otherwise known as Phytomedicine.
History of Herbal Medicine
 Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of medicinal plants dates back to the
Paleolithic age approximately 60,000 years ago.
 The oldest written evidence of herbal medicine has been found on a Sumerian Clay Slab,
approximately 5000 years ago. It comprises 12 methods of drug preparations referring to
over 250 different plants.
 Some ancient cultures wrote about plants and their medical uses in books called herbals.
 Egypt’s mentioned the herbs in Egyptian medical papyri. Among all papyri, the oldest,
lengthiest, and most important medical papyri is Ebers Papyrus which dates from 1550 BC
and covers more than 700 compounds, mainly of plant origin.
 The earliest known Greek herbals came from Theophastrus who wrote: "Historia
Plantarum" having the classification of 500 medicinal plants.
 Seeds, likely used for herbalism were found in archaeological sites of Bronze age China
dating from the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC)
 Over a hundred of the 224 compounds mentioned in the Huangdi Neijing, an early Chinese
medical text.
 The Chinese book on root and grasses “Pen T Sao” written by Emperor Shen Nung Circa in
2500 BC has 365 drugs made of plants.

2. Herbal Cultivation
 Benedictine monasteries were the primary source of herbal medical knowledge
in Europe and England during the Early Middle Ages.
 A great scholar, Avicenna of the Arabian School wrote ‘The Canon of Medicine’ which
became the standard medical reference work of the Arab world. This book includes a
description of 760 medicinal plants and the medicine that could be derived from them.
 In India, the Ayurvedic system of medicine is the oldest system of medicine which dates
back to 4000 BC.
 The earliest Sanskrit writings such as the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda are some of the
earliest available documents detailing the medical knowledge that formed the basis of the
Ayurveda system.
 Many other herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda were later described by ancient Indian
herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta during the 1st millennium BC.
 The Sushruta Samhita attributed to Sushruta in the 6th century BC describes 700
medicinal plants, 64 preparations from mineral sources, and 57 preparations based on
animal sources.
 Siddha's system of medicine is also one of the oldest traditional medicines. It is practiced
mostly in Tamil Nadu. According to the tradition, eighteen Siddhars were supposed to
have contributed to the development of Siddha medicine.
In every period, every successive century from the development of humankind and advanced
civilizations, the healing properties of certain medicinal plants were identified, noted, and
conveyed to the successive generations. The benefits of one society were passed on to another,
which upgraded the old properties, discovered new ones, till the present days. The continuous and
perpetual people's interest in medicinal plants has brought about today's modern and
sophisticated fashion of their processing and usage.
M.Priyadharshana
14/3/2021

3. Herbal Cultivation