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Herbalism

Herbal medical practice in North America draws primarily on traditions from native healers of this continent and Europe, and secondarily from eastern Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Much less common in North America are those herbal traditions native to Africa, Australia, or the various island kingdoms. All herbal traditions use plants variously prepared to treat patient symptoms.

European Tradition

An archaeological find in present-day Iraq from a 60,000-year-old burial site shows drawings of Althea and Achillea, botanicals used today. Cuneiform tablets from Iraq dating to 4000 b.c.e. show such medicines as Glycyrrhiza, Papaver, Thymus, and Brassica. An Egyptian papyrus from the 16th century B.C.E contains some 800 recipes and over 700 plants, treatments for diabetes, and the use of mudpacks for open sores. Hippocrates, the Greek father of medicine, wrote in 400 B.C.E about the medical use of over 300 plants. Theophrastus (371–287 B.C.E) wrote Inquiry into Plants and Growth of Plants, describing over 550 plants and their uses. The Greek physician Dioscorides in the 1st century C.E. authored De Materia Medica, cataloging the medical use of over 600 plants, 35 animals, and 90 minerals. Naturalist and botanist Pietro Mattioli of Venice reprinted it in 1544. Between 400 and 1500 C.E., the Catholic Church controlled medical knowledge and herbal medicines were grown administered by the clergy and knowledgeable laypeople. This changed with Church decrees that forced the clergy to focus on saving souls, and medical and herbal education to become a part of the early universities.

English herbal tradition was legalized under Henry VIII in 1541 under the Herbalist Charter. It preserved the use of herbs for the King and all of his subjects. The best lexicon of these plants was The Herbal (The English Physitian [Physician]) of 1652 produced by Nicholas Culpeper (1616–54) who began his herbal practice as a physician in 1640. It described various botanicals, their harvesting, preparation, and use with a view to the astrological chart. A modern update to Culpeper that borrowed heavily without credit from King's American Dispensatory was Maud Grieve's A Modern Herbal published in 1931. It provided information on the medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, cultivation, and economic uses of some 800 herbs. Between Culpeper and Grieves was Carl von Linne (1701–78) who set about to categorize every plant, animal, and mineral. He established botanical taxonomy and the use of a Latin binomial consisting of genus and species (e.g., Echinacea angustifolia, Taraxacum officinale) to describe every plant. This system has become a universal language for naming all plants (and animals) including those used in herbalism.

Eclectic Tradition

Constantine Rafinesque (1784–1841), a botanist and advocate of herbs as medicines, explored the Mississippi River Valley learning from the various American Indian communities what plants were used, how they were prepared, and for what conditions. He is credited as the first to use the term eclectic meaning “to adopt into practice what is beneficial.” Explorers, trappers, and early settlers traveling west along the Oregon Trail and other routes adopted from the various Indian tribes many more herbs (e.g., Artemisia, Arctostaphylos, Lomatium, Vaccinium, etc.) and used them daily. An estimated 90 percent of the North American medicinal herbs used here and in Europe came from east of the Mississippi River with 75 percent from the Appalachian forests. Botanical diversity in the Mississippi drainage and regions to the east is greater than that of the Rocky Mountains and lands to the west. Native American traditions were mainly oral, so few texts exist. The single best reference on Native American herbs and their use is by Moerman. This reference is organized alphabetically by species, indicating its use as a drug, food, fiber, dye, and other uses, and within these categories by tribe and how they specifically used the plant. This text includes over 4,000 plants, from 1,200 genera and their use by 291 different societies from the North American Arctic to Mexico.

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