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How did people use the healing power of herbs?

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Archie Heron
How did people use the healing power of herbs?

People discovered the healing power of herbs thousands of years ago. Probably the ancient Egyptians were the first, but we are not 100% sure if the cave people did not already use this natural healing method.

Regardless of who was first, since it was discovered that there is a healing substance in some plants, people have been constantly expanding their knowledge of the healing power of plants, discovering newer and newer species that improved health or cured certain diseases after consumption.

Checking whether or not a given species is a healing plant certainly ended up tragically in many cases if someone found a poisonous plant. Thanks to these sometimes heroic efforts, we now have a great deal of knowledge about how herbs affect our health and which herbs to use for certain conditions. However, this does not mean that we already know everything. We are constantly discovering new properties of already researched plants, or discovering a new species that can be labelled a medicinal plant.

For most of us, the method of treating ailments with plants is known as herbal medicine. Not everyone knows that this method also has a professional medical name and is known among doctors as phytotherapy. Due to the proven positive effect that some plants have on our body, it is recommended the same and sometimes even more than usual methods of treatment. The basic advantage that a natural therapeutic substance has over industrially produced products is the absence of negative side effects related, for example, to the influence of taking tablets on the stomach.

The natural substances contained in plants can help us when we are tired of a tiresome cough, when we need to improve our body's immunity and are looking for something to strengthen it, and also when we find it problematic to expect expectoration due to some ailment. Thanks to the vast amount of knowledge accumulated about medicinal plants, we know, for example, that aniseed has expectorant properties.

We also learn more and more about the influence of herbs that we use during cooking. Herbs in the kitchen have been used for centuries, and most probably our ancestors knew well that they not only improve the taste of food, but also, such as marjoram, facilitate digestion. Looking at the kitchens of European countries, it is easy to see that each country in its kitchen uses mainly those herbs that grow naturally under given climatic conditions. Italy, for example, has given nature basil and it is present in almost every Italian dish. Basil is added to sauces, soups, pizza, salads and even to drinks.

In France, thyme is one of the most commonly used herbs. In Arabic and Middle Eastern cuisines, coriander is the same as parsley, a taste addition to almost all dishes. Moving even further on the map we reach China and Japan, where ginger reigns in turn. There are also herbs, which occur naturally in all climatic conditions, and only the way they are prepared changes. A good example is mint, which is used by some as an herbal tea and by others as a great addition to salad.

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Archie Heron
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