Modern medicine has its roots in what humans learned over thousands of years about the medicinal benefits of plants. That knowledge isn’t irrelevant today; rather, herbs and natural medicine are so important to our well-being, and in many cases, provide an alternative to pharmaceutical drugs with deleterious side effects.
Folk medicine as medicine wasn’t just fake cures. The history of aspirin illustrates this point. It’s a leading modern pain reliever, fever suppressant and preventer of reoccurring heart attacks/strokes. The aspirin story begins with willow leaves, used as pain relief by ancient civilizations, like the Sumerians and Egyptians. Around 400 B.C., the Greeks brewed a tea of willow leaves to ease the pain of childbirth.
In 1763, the Royal Medical Society in England chronicled what the country folk were using all along against pain—dried willow bark. In 1828, the active ingredient called salicin was extracted from willow in Germany. A Swiss doctor then realized that a country pain remedy that used the flowers of the herb meadowsweet contained salicin, too.
In 1899, a small German corporation named Bayer created a synthetic drug: acetylsalicylic acid—branded as aspirin. The letter ‘A’ stands for acetyl, ‘spir’ is derived from meadowsweet, which yields salicin and ‘in’ was a common suffix used for drugs at that time. Bayer built itself as a pharma Goliath because of aspirin.
Woman healers became ugly witches
Before Christianity, deities of medical arts were largely female—including Isis, Athena and Hera—and their priestesses, physician-healers. They harnessed the power of plants to ease suffering and common ailments, and avoided those that were poisonous.
Christianity twisted the image of women into Eve, the source of evil in the world, and women healers became ugly witches with caldrons who wanted to do nothing but harm. Women were barred from the medical profession starting in the Middle Ages, and any woman practicing folk medicine was likely to be burned at the stake.
Women couldn’t become medically trained or join a guild for many centuries, but the formal physic garden owes its origin to her.
A telltale sign of a witch was her cottage garden, a botanical library of medicinal plants that she dried, blended, distilled and stored. Women couldn’t become medically trained or join a guild for many centuries, but the formal physic garden owes its origin to her.
In 1673, a patch of walled land along the Thames river in a village called Chelsea, near London, became the location for the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries to create a physic garden. It had a perfect microclimate, where they could educate, discover plants locally and from many lands, grow the plants and transport them.
The Chelsea Physic Garden introduced plants such as cotton, cocoa and coffee to England. Thousands of plant species were collected, grown and studied for their use as medicine, edible crops or other useful goods, like clothing dyes, building materials and pollen/nectar to support bee populations.
In modern times, the Garden includes endangered plants, but has not changed its original character as an educational and research physic garden.
It was no arduous journey for me to spend time in the Chelsea Physic Garden, now part of West London. Rather, it was a single bus ride to the banks of the Thames, a short walk to the entrance. I spent many hours there, wandering the greenhouses, studying plant labels, breathing the sweet air of flowers and watching the bees at work.
Usually, I limited my visit to one section of the Garden, to slow down and appreciate what I was seeing. One day it was the Order Beds, set up by botanical families with more than 800 plants. Then the Woodland Garden and Pond Rockery with its bog and aquatic plants, even boasting clam shells from Tahiti collected by Captain Cook.
The Garden has retained its structure as a physic garden, grouping plants into separate areas by edible, useful (200 species of those) or medicinal (which is the largest of the three, with individual garden rooms for each type).
I lingered in the medicinal section, learning so much about world medicine and the shamans, priestesses and herbalists who served their communities. One section is devoted to pharma plants that form the basis of 25 percent of modern Western medicines—60 vital lifesavers, including meadowsweet (aspirin). Beauty with purpose!
My own garden of herbs, flowers and edible plants owes much to my solo wanderings at Chelsea. I think of my patch of Eden as a physic garden to nurture wildlife and myself.
Medical disclaimer: This page is for educational and informational purposes only and may not be construed as medical advice. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by physicians. Please refer to the full text of our medical disclaimer.
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image 1 ? Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay 2 image by ELG21 from Pixabay
