The Origins of Plant Medicine
(Page 3 of 3)
June/July 2009
By The Herb Companion staff
16th Century A.D.
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• On the other side of the world, in 1552, 31 years after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), Aztec physician Martinus de la Cruz wrote an herbal in the Nahuatl language (a local Aztec language). Called the Badianus Manuscript, it’s the first herbal of the Americas, and details therapeutic uses of 251 Mexican plant species. Written under order of the son of the first viceroy of New Spain, who was interested in herbs and spices of the New World and the medical knowledge of the Aztecs, the herbal conveys Aztec knowledge of medicinal plants and their pharmacological actions.
• In the 1600s, Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physitian was published. Culpeper advocated affordable health care based on the use of locally grown plants, and his herbal was a bestseller.
18th to 20th Century A.D.
• Native Americans in North America shared herbal knowledge with settlers, especially at the end of the 18th and into the 19th centuries. Samuel Thomson based his regimens on Native American herbal practice, and a group of physicians called the Eclectics combined the then-new knowledge of physiology and pathology with herbal traditions.
• By the early 20th century, herbal medicine in the United States became secondary to conventional medicine, largely because of the government’s decision to give financial support only to schools that practiced conventional medicine.
Additional Reading
Chevallier, Andrew. The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants. New York: Dorling Kindersley, DK Publishing, 1996.
Foster, Steven. “The Badianus Manuscript: America’s First Herbal.” The Herb Companion 1994, pp. 27–33.
Griggs, Barbara. Green Pharmacy: The History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine. Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 1997.
Suellentrop, Joyce. “Hildegard of Bingen: Medieval Healer of the Rhine.” The Herb Companion 1995, pp. 62–66.
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