Ancient texts with writings about herbalism give us a sense of how our ancestors lived, survived, and interacted with the natural world around them. De Materia Medica, Latin for “On Medical Material” is a surviving text from the first century written by Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40-90 CE), a Greek medical botanist and physician who served in the Roman army. His five-volume manuscript describes approximately 600 plants for more than 1,000 traditional medicines. Centuries after it was written, Dioscorides’ celebrated herbal reference would become the basis of European and Western pharmacopeia.
Spreading Herbal Knowledge: as an army surgeon, Dioscorides traveled throughout the ancient world and observed, collected, and applied hundreds of plants to his medical practice. Because of his detailed descriptions of plant remedies from many different regions, Dioscorides became a trusted source of knowledge. For the first time in known history, information about medicinal plants and remedies were more easily documented and distributed across diverse cultures and languages.
The original manuscript was written almost two thousand years ago and has never been found; however, the oldest known copy is currently in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Other celebrated copies can be found in the national libraries of Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and Britain, in the sacred monastery of Mount Athos, Greece, and in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. The first and only translation from the original Greek to English was not completed until 1655, and a modern English translation was completed in 2000 by Tess Anne Osbaldeston and R.P. Wood, who created a 1,000-page text complete with vivid images borrowed from well-preserved 16th-century.
The Bounty of De Materia Medica: what makes De Materia Medica significant in the history of medicine is how well-referenced it is by medical practitioners and herbalists throughout the centuries and in multiple languages. For Western and European herbalism, De Materia Medica helped educate physicians on natural medicines and elevated the importance of using plants native to Europe and the Mediterranean in a healing capacity. Dioscorides documented everything he learned about plants, animals, and minerals from his travels.
To organize his information, he divided his book into five parts:
· Volume I: Aromatics
· Volume II: Animals to herbs
· Volume III: Roots, seeds, and herbs
· Volume IV: Roots and herbs
· Volume V: Vines, wines, and minerals
Each section provides a bounty of information about where the herbs grow, how and what to use them for, and other interesting tidbits that can be used to infer about life in ancient times. From potions using mandrake and hellebore, to herbs “effective against things that darken the pupils,” some of these such as cow dung are worth noting for their unique applications, and some remain applicable for use in the Western pharmacopeia.
A sampling of information from the 1,000 pages of De Materia Medica translated by Osbaldeston and Wood includes:
· Celandine (Greek: Chelidonion mikron: Latin: Chelidonia minor): grows around waters and marshy places, and is sharp like an anemone, ulcerating to the outside of the skin. Suggested remedies include juicing the roots and inserting them into the nostrils with honey for purging the head. A decoction gargled with honey purges the head and purges all things out of the chest.
· Cow Dung: Fresh (Greek: Apopatos: Ayurveda (Panchagavya): when wrapped in leaves and heated above hot ashes, cow dung lessens the inflammation of wounds and serves as a warm pack for lessening sciatica. When applied with vinegar, it dissolves hardness, goiters, and bone inflammation.
· Garlic (Greek: Skorodon: Latin: Allium sativum): among its many uses, garlic can be rubbed on for loss of hair, but for this it must be used with ointment of nard, also known as spikenard (Nardostachys jatamansi). It can also be combined with salt and oil to heal erupted pimples.
· Gentian (Greek: Gentiana: Latin (Gentiana lutea): the most bitter plant material known, gentian was named for Gentius, the last king of Illyria who, according to Dioscorides, was first to find it. A teaspoon of extracted juice is good for disorders of the sides, falls from heights, hernia, and convulsions. It also helps liver ailments and gastritis when taken as a drink with water. The root, especially the juice applied as a suppository, is an abortifacient. It is juiced by being bruised and steeped in water for five days, then boiled in the water until the roots appear on top. When the water is cold it is strained, boiled until it becomes like honey in consistency, and stored in a ceramic jar.
· Hyssop (Greek: Ussopos: Latin: Hyssopus hortensis or Hyssopus officinalis): boiled with figs, water, honey, and rue and taken as a drink it helps pneumonia, asthma, internal coughs, mucus, asthma, and kills worms.
· Licorice (Greek: Glukoriza, meaning “sweet root,” Latin: Glycyrrhiza glabra): helps with burning of the stomach, disorders in the chest and liver, parasitic skin diseases, and bladder or kidney disorders. Taken with a drink of passum (raisin wine) and melted in the mouth, it quenches thirst, rubbed on, it heals wounds, and chewed, it is good for the stomach.
· Wormwood (Greek: Apsinthion, Latin: Absinthium vulgare or Seriphium absinthium, or Artemisia absinthium): banned for its narcotic properties in the U.S. until 2007, wormwood was well-known in ancient times, with the best kind growing in Pontus and on Mount Taurus in Cappadocia, current-day southern Turkey. It is warming, astringent, and digestive, and takes away bilious matter sticking in the stomach and bowels.
· NOTE: to this day, there are herbs from the ancient world that have yet to be identified, including Acanthium (Greek: Akanthion), which grew a soft web at its tip, similar to silk, that was gathered and spun. The leaves and roots were prepared as a drink to help alleviate a stiff neck.
Early pharmacopoeias were books of recipes for extracts, syrups, and oils that provided guidance for standardization of herbal medicinal preparations. Many of these recipes originated with Galen (129 AD – 216 AD), a prominent Greek physician whose medical theories emphasized the importance of anatomy and organ functions. Galenical recipes were mostly crudely extracted herbal preparations. Over time, standards of identity and quality for individual herbal medicines was used, and many of these did not specify plant species, but included information regarding the identifying morphological characteristics such as origin, collection practices, and drying conditions of the herbal material.
The modern concept of herbal pharmacopeia is defined as containing “pharmaceutical specifications that are intended to secure uniformity in the composition, quality, and therapeutic activity of herbal medicines”. The earlier works of materia medica, which attempted to codify the preparation of medicinal herbal ingredients or formulas, can be considered the antecedents of today’s pharmacopoeias. The first herbal pharmacopeia was “Nuovo Receptario Composito”, a book of medical herbal ingredient standards written by the guild of physicians in Florence, Italy in 1498. In 1548, the actual word pharmacopoeia appeared in “Pharmacopoeia Jacobi Sylvii libri tres” written by French physician Jacques Dubois, and the first officially sanctioned work with the word pharmacopoeia was the “Pharmacopoeia Augustana of 1601”. Others soon followed and established the model for official pharmacopoeias.
Macroscopic & Organoleptic Evaluation: pharmacopoeia monographs include a morphological description of the plant, and its relative form, size, shape, and physical features. These were the primary criteria used by traditional herbalists in discerning the authenticity of the plant material.
Organoleptic assessment is the most important process used for determining the relative quality of an herb, and it includes an assessment of the flavor, mouth feel, aroma, texture, and sensation experienced by the assessor. Flavor arises when chemicals in herbs react with receptors on the taste buds of the tongue, mouth, and throat. The tongue is covered with up to 5,000 taste buds, each one containing 50 to 100 taste receptor cells. Five basic flavors of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami are recognized, and the umami flavor is defined as “savory”. The flavors recognized in traditional herbal medicine are sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and pungent, and in Ayurveda, astringent, which is a mouth feel that is a flavor for purposes of describing herbal actions.
Prior to the development of analytical chemistry, the focus of pharmacopoeias and materia Medicas was on morphology as the primary identity test, and proper harvesting conditions and organoleptic characters as the primary criteria used to assess herb quality. In 1741, the “Pharmacopoeia Wirttembergica” was the first pharmacopoeia to introduce chemical testing of drugs, a trend that continued as analytical chemistry advanced and chemically characterized drugs became dominant. Whereas the earliest pharmacopoeias and materia Medicas reflected an herbal-botanical approach to the assessment of herbal medicines, later Western pharmacopoeias that persist to the current day, deferred to chemistry.
In 1792, The “Dispensatorium Lippiacum”, written by Johann Christian Friedrich Scherf (1750 – 1818), introduced organoleptic characterizations and the use of magnifiers as part of the assessment criteria for plant medicines.
Botanical Nomenclature: it is VERY important to learn the scientific names of the plants used in herbal medicine. The system currently used in applying names to plants had its beginning in 1754 with Carolus Linneaus’ “Species Plantarum”. The components of each species name include the genus name and specific epithet, which are italicized or underlined, and the authority or individual(s) responsible for the name. For example, Quercus alba L. is the genus name for the group of plants commonly known as oaks. The specific epithet is alba, Latin for white, and is descriptive of the bark and wood of the plant commonly known as white oak. The authority is L., an abbreviation for Linneaus, who first coined a formal name for this plant.
Since the time of Linnaeus, the system of nomenclature has become more formalized and codified, and the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) has been established to provide a uniform set of rules to be followed in applying names to plants. The rules contained in the ICBN are revised during the International Botanical Congresses, which are held every six years.
According to Phyllis Light, a 5th generation herbalist, “by the time the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Spanish explorers and their African slaves had already settled in southern North America, and this is where Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine originated. The natural healers, Spanish botanists, and physicians who traveled with these expeditions practiced herbal medicine based on the works of Galen (129 – 216 CE), a Greek physician who heavily influenced medicinal practices until the mid-17th century. They created drawings of the exotic plant and animal life encountered in this “New World”.
During this time, in Europe, obsessive Christian religious beliefs were intertwined with humoral medicine to form the “Old World” medical system. Humoral medicine stated that four body fluids; blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, through complex interactions, were the cause of disease, along with lifestyle, habits, and the environment. Health consisted of humoral equilibrium, and disease resulted when an excess or deficiency occurred in one or more of the humors. This theory forced physicians to observe their patients closely because diagnosis and treatment began here. The physician’s job was to diagnose which humor was out of balance, and treatment focused on restoring equilibrium.”
These four humors corresponded to their natures to earth, air, fire, and water of which all matter was composed.
· Blood: hot and wet like air.
· Phlegm: cold and wet like water.
· Yellow Bile: hot and dry like fire.
· Black Bile: cold and dry like earth.
In 1526, a large group of Spanish colonists and their African slaves settled on the shores of South Carolina not far from where the English would establish the Jamestown colony. Disease and hunger killed the colonists, and their slaves escaped and settled with local Native American tribes. The Native American way of life was similar to African tribal life, and the two groups were neither European nor Christian. In the New World, the humoral medicine doctrines of Europe combined with Native American herbal practices to form the foundations of Southern Folk Medicine.
When the British arrived in the New World searching for gold, a task which proved to be futile, they found and cultivated tobacco. In 1588, Thomas Harriot wrote: “tobacco offers wondrous health benefits. Its leaves are dried, made into powder, and then smoked by being sucked through clay pipes into the stomach and head. The fumes purge superfluous phlegm and gross humors from the body by opening all the pores and passages. Thus, its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions, it breaks them up. By this means, the natives are kept in excellent health without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England.”
As the tobacco industry expanded, thousands of Irish indentured servants and convicts were transported to work in the tobacco fields. This social development added more elements to American traditional medicine. Celts from Ireland arrived in the South to escape the poverty and despair of their homeland. A large segment of the Irish population, a clan-based society, migrated with their chieftains and healers into exile, either to the European continent or to the “New World”. Each healer was attached to an Irish Laird’s house and swore loyalty to both Laird and clan. The exodus of many of the healers and seers from Ireland left the remaining Irish people with little medical care and caused traditional Irish medicine to fade into history.
By 1627, five thousand or more Irish had settled in Virginia, and by 1790, the Irish comprised 25% of the population of the South Carolina colony and 27% of the Georgia colony. Once these Irish worked off their debt, they migrated further south into the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. This migration continued through the 1840’s. The early Celts intermarried regularly with the Native Americans and with African indentured slaves. They had already integrated Christianity and humoral medicine into their healing systems, and the Bible, folk magic, and herbs were used side-by-side. The influence of Irish and Scotch-Irish healing practices were seen in the beliefs that moon signs, astrological influences, superstitions, and spiritual actions contributed to both health and illness.
The colonists searched for ways to deal with the diseases of the “New World”, and quickly adopted Native American herb use and healing modalities. Native tribes had a health philosophy which centered around the importance of relationships to spirit, tribe, self, and family, and they believed that a lack of relationship or conflict within a relationship could cause illness. The knowledge of medicinal and food plant use ensured the colonists survival. Settlers that moved into the southern Appalachians and Lower South dealt with humidity and dense woodlands that were sources of parasites and malaria, and the Native American knowledge of the climate, terrain, plants, and animals were relied on and well documented.
Natural constraints played an important role in the establishment of Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine. Many traditional herbal remedies evolved as seasoning remedies, the physical adaptation to the elements of a new climate, including water, land, strength of the sun, and the natural surroundings. This was a necessary process that ensured long-term survival, and one out of every 3 settlers that moved from the northeast to the south died.
In 1619, the importation of thousands of African slaves to the New World played a key part of Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine. These slaves were limited in their movements, were culturally isolated, and were highly susceptible to seasoning diseases. An unintended result was the formation of plantation medicine, a health care system that developed with little outside influence.
In Africa, herbalist, root doctor (or conjurer), diviner, poisoner, and spirit medium were separate jobs; however, on the plantation, these were embodied in one person. On many plantations and in small southern towns, herbal information was exchanged across social lines. Tasks such as treating illness, delivering babies, and preparing the deceased for burial were considered women’s work.
The Civil War revitalized the use of traditional herbal medicine in the south as it was the only medicine available to civilians and the military. The south was blockaded by land and sea and cut off from the import of medicines and food. This forced a return to the first principles of healing which was a vital step in the preservation of Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine. In 1898, Walter Fleming wrote: “the druggists of the south had to either manufacture medicines from native barks, leaves, roots, and herbs, or purchased supplies brought in by blockade runners at the southern ports”.
Southern druggists used white lightning or moonshine to tincture herbs such as:
· Mandrake (Atropa mandragora)
· Virginia snakeroot (Aristolochia serpentaria)
· Yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima)
· Sampson’s snakeroot (Orbexilum pedunculatum)
· Peach leaves (Prunus persica)
· Black pepper (Piper nigrum)
· Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)
· Poke root (Phytolacca americana)
· American sarsaparilla root (Smilax ornata)
· Sassafras (Sassafras officinale)
· Tag alder (Alnus serrulata)
· Prickly ash (Xanthoxylum fraxineum)
· Black haw (Viburnum prunifolium)
· Partridge berry (Mitchella repens)
· Raspberry leaves (Rubus idaeus)
· Blackberry leaves (Rubus fruticosus)
· Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria)
· Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)
· Slippery elm (Ulmus fulva)
· Cayenne (Capsicum annuum)
· Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)
· White pine (Pinus strobus)
· Wild cherry (Prunus virginiana)
· Lobelia (Lobelia inflata)
After the Civil War, the south experienced reconstruction which brought poverty and forced a reliance on herbal and alternative healing modalities.
By 1929 and during the Depression era, the south was still suffering from the ravages of reconstruction. During this time, a new generation of herbalists and teachers, including Tommy Bass and Catfish Gray, provided effective and inexpensive remedies using Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine which functioned within a holistic framework. Healing protocols included herbs and foods, and practitioners recognized the blood as the most important body part.
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