Isolated Cultures, Similar Herbs

The New Healing Herbs: The Ultimate Guide to Natures Best Medicines
by Michael Castleman

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Trial and Error

Our ancestors also discovered many healing herbs simply by trial and error. They learned through experience that some plants healed, while others harmed. They had little control over their world or their bodies. Their average life expectancy was barely 30 years. Because their lives were so full of threatening, often fatal, surprises, anything that made life more predictable acquired an aura of magic and healing.

It's no coincidence that shamans from prehistoric times down to the present day have relied heavily on herbs, such as ipecac, buckthorn, and wormwood, that cause vomiting, purging, and hallucinations. Any predictable effect was better than none, and the ability to induce vomiting, purging, or visions made shaman/herbalists appear to possess magic powers.

The allure of predictable action remained central to medicine for thousands of years. Herbs that induced vomiting (emetics) or had powerful laxative action were used routinely in medicine until well into the 19th century.

Major effects made big impressions, but early humans also recognized herbs' more subtle benefits. We'll never know what possessed some ancient Chinese peasant to brew a tea from the small, ungainly stalks of ma huang (Chinese ephedra), but several thousand years ago, someone did. In the process, that person stumbled upon one of the world's oldest medicines, a decongestant whose laboratory analog, pseudoephedrine, is still an ingredient in cold formulas today.

Similarly, we'll never know how many roots ancient Asians dug up before they discovered ginger. Or why Native Americans had a hunch that black cohosh might be useful in gynecology. All over the world, however, ancient peoples dug, dried, chewed, pounded, rubbed, and brewed the plants around them. In this way, they discovered the vast majority of healing herbs still in use today.

Isolated Cultures, Similar Herbs

Herbal trial and error becomes even more remarkable when we consider that cultures separated by thousands of miles arrived at similar uses for many healing herbs. What's more, they apparently did so independently of one another.

There are four major herbal traditions: Chinese, Ayurvedic (in India), European (including Egyptian), and Native American. The spice trade clearly introduced Asian herbs such as garlic, ginger, and cinnamon into Europe thousands of years ago. And a few ancient herbalists - notably the 1st-century Greek Dioscorides - traveled extensively, spreading knowledge around the ancient world.

Nonetheless, early Chinese, Indian, and European herbalists were largely isolated from one another. In modern times, it's difficult to comprehend just how isolated they were. Until the 1st century a.d., it took 2 years for spice traders to make the round trip from Greece to India's black-pepper-producing region. Even in this age of instant global communication, different healing systems still operate relatively independently of one another. During the 1970s and early 1980s, ginkgo became an important medicine in France and Germany for aging-related ailments, with sales topping $500 million a year. Most U.S. medical school libraries stocked the German and French journals showing ginkgo's remarkable effectiveness, yet American physicians virtually ignored ginkgo well into the 1990s. So how connected could the ancient herbalists have been?

Even granting a nearly impossible level of herbal cross-fertilization between Asia and Europe, the land bridge between Asia and North America became the Bering Sea about 10,000 years ago. Until the 15th century, Old World cultures were almost entirely isolated from the Americas, but nonetheless, Old and New World herbalists used many herbs similarly.

• Angelica and licorice: Asians, Europeans, and Native Americans relied on these herbs as treatments for respiratory ailments.
• Hop and the mints: All of the ancient herbal traditions used these herbs as stomach soothers.
• Blackberry and raspberry: Around the world, these herbs played a role in treating diarrhea.
• Uva-ursi: Asians, Europeans, and Native Americans all discovered this herb's diuretic properties.
• White willow: All of the herbal healing disciplines used this herb to treat pain and inflammation.

During the 19th century, chemists homed in on this "herbal convergence" to point them to the plants whose extracts became the first pharmaceuticals. According to a report in the journal Science, about 75 percent of the pharmaceuticals derived from plants came to drug companies' attention because of their use in traditional herbal medicine.

Homage to the "Wise Women"

Most medical histories chronicle great achievements by great men: Hippocrates, the father of medicine; Galen, Rome's leading physician; William Harvey's explanation of blood circulation; Edward Jenner's inoculations against smallpox; Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory; Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin. The contributions of these men unquestionably changed the world. But from ancient times down to the present day, a relatively small number of male physicians made the great discoveries and ministered to the rich and royal. An enormous number of women herbalists took care of everyone else.

Women healers have gone by many names: midwives, wise women, green women, witches, old wives, and nurses. Most physicians have never taken women's folk healing very seriously, and scientists often dismiss folk wisdom as "old wives' tales."

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Castleman. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Michael Castleman is an award-winning health journalist with more than 30 years' experience reporting on conventional and alternative medicine. He is the author of 10 books - including Blended Medicine: The Best Choices in Healing, Nature's Cures, and Before You Call the Doctor - as well as numerous articles for publications and online information services.