Herbal Medicine Fundamentals

Modern medical doctors treat herbalists with skepticism or simply reject them. It is a shame that people do not know that modern pharmacology developed from Herbalism, and what place medicinal plants played in its history.

The word drug comes from the Dutch word “droog” which means “to dry” in reference to how ancient doctors dried plants for use as medicines. In the Middle Ages, after the black death, the use of plants as medicines was replaced with more toxic chemical substances: mercury, lead, etc. With chemistry developing, medicinal plants have been replaced with the allopathic system.

The earliest discovery of pharmacology should be considered the very discovery of drugs. For thousands of years, doctors used herbs and minerals to treat diseases and injuries. Famous pharmacological substances such as Aspirin, Opiates, Ephedrine, Quinalaquin, Digoxin, and Taxol were obtained from plants.