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Category:Herbal medicine

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/* Herbal Medicine in History */
Herbal medicine -- also called botanical medicine or phytomedicine -- refers to using a plant's seeds, berries, roots, leaves, bark, or flowers for medicinal purposes. Herbalism has a long tradition of use outside of conventional medicine. It is becoming more mainstream as improvements in analysis and quality control along with advances in clinical research show the value of herbal medicine in the treating and preventing disease.
==Herbal Medicine in History==
Plants had been used for medicinal purposes long before recorded history. Ancient Chinese and Egyptian papyrus writings describe medicinal uses for plants as early as 3,000 BC. In ancient Sumeria, plant remedies for common illnesses where discovered on clay tablets. The ancient Sumerians found that certain plants had medicinal qualities and when processed correctly, they could heal illness and injuries.<br>In India, the Rig-Veda a sacred Hindu text lists herbal medicines and created the Ayurvedic health care system in this Asia country. Ancient China has its own list of herbal medicines compiled in the Pun-tsao text, written in the 1600s. In the New World, the Aztecs wrote texts on herbal medicines derived from their knowledge of plants they had discovered to have medicinal qualities. The Badianus Manuscripts were written in 1592 by the Aztec Martinus de la Cruz for King Charles I of Spain.<br>Indigenous cultures (such as African and Native American) used herbs in their healing rituals, while others developed traditional medical systems (such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine) in which herbal therapies were used. Researchers found that people in different parts of the world tended to use the same or similar plants for the same purposes.<br>In the early 19th centuryancient Greece, when chemical analysis first became available, scientists began to extract Hippocrates sought herbal remedies as cures for illness and modify disease. Another Greek named Dioscorides collected plants during his travels with the active ingredients from Roman army and investigated whether they had any medicinal value. His work De Materia Medica listed 600 species of plantsthat had some sort of medicinal quality. LaterThe Age of Herbals, chemists which began making their own version of plant compounds andin 1450, over time, the use of herbal medicines declined brought about a revival in favor of drugsusing plants for medicinal purposes. Almost one fourth of pharmaceutical drugs are derived from botanicals.Recently, Authors such as John Gerard and John Parkinson wrote about the World Health Organization estimated that 80% benefits of people worldwide rely on herbal medicines plants for some part of their primary health caremedicinal purposes. In Germany, Nicholas Culpepper wrote about 600 - 700 plant based medicines are available and are prescribed by some 70% the Doctrine of German physicians. In Signatures which stated that the past 20 years in the United States, public dissatisfaction with the cost designs or colors of prescription medicationsa plants corresponds to human anatomy.<br>Today, combined with an interest many rural populations in returning the world use plants for medicinal purposes. Medicinal plants offer poorer populations the ability to natural or organic remedies, has led combat diseases at low costs. Countries like China and India continue to teach their medical students how to an increase in herbal medicine useplants in order to make proven and effective medicines for their patients.
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