I sincerely apologize...this class log was lost in a cyber accident. Lady NightShade generously provided her class notes for posting.

LADY NIGHTSHADE:

She walks out into the garden, basket and knife in hand. Stopping here and there, she cuts stems from various plants and digs up a root or two, placing them in her basket as she goes along. Returning to her kitchen, she washes and cuts the plants and adds them to a simmering pot.

Is this scene past or present? Are the plants being used for cooking, medicine or magick?

The answer is yes to all. In both past and present, the above scene takes place on an almost daily basis around the world. The purpose of the plants can be any one of the three. The plants are herbs, and their uses are many.

Throughout history, herbs have been used for various reasons...cooking (both as flavoring and as a food), medicine, magick, cosmetics, dyes, and more.

Knowledge about herbs has been passed down through time from one generation to the next...first by word of mouth, then through writing. Even today, herbal lore and history is passed down in the same ways. Witches, magickians, alchemists, housewives, and others all have their own intricate operations of herbal use. Much of what they know has been passed down from past generations and they themselves will continue to pass down their knowledge in one form or another.

Early plant knowledge was passed on verbally. As both the body of knowledge and population grew, it became more important to accurately record the accumulated information. Many of the earliest writings are about herbs which were important in ceremony, magick and medicine. Babylonian clay tablets from 3000 BC illustrate medical treatments and later they record herbal imports.

The history of herbs is a history of economic botany -- plants used by humans for various uses. Plants are central to this history, but it must be remembered this history is peopled with warriors and gardeners, wives and mothers, witches and shamans, doctors and quacks, dreamers and schemers. The cord of the tale has many strands -- cultural, social, economic. Herbs are celebrated for many uses, but the oldest uses seem to be medicinal ones.

HERBAL MEDICINE IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

The oldest known systems of medicine in the world today are those of China, India and Egypt. The system of Chinese polypharmacy, which has survived into modern times, is widely acclaimed as one of the most complete and effective herbal traditions still existing. The oldest Chinese pharmacopoeia, Pen-ts'ao (Herbal), is reputed to be the work of Emperor Shen-nung, a great cultural hero said to have lived from 3737 to 2697 BC. Shen-nung is said to have compounded and self-tested hundreds of herbal preparations, aided by a transparent abdomen that enabled him to observe the workings of his internal organs. This gift was undoubtedly a gift of legend, rather than nature.

Recorded in the Pen-ts'ao are 365 medical preparations...all but 51 herbal. The authenticity of the book is in question. The ancient Chinese had a propensity for attributing their writing to older sources in the hope of bolstering their value, and such is probably the case here. Studies have placed Pen-ts'ao in the first millennium before Christ, making it not as old as the Ebers Papyrus (note posted on BB about this). Despite the discrepancy of the dates, Pen-ts'aois a valuable and legitimate old herbal.

From the 3rd century BC to 7th century AD, Chinese medicine was highly influenced by the philosophy and example of Taoist sages. These sages believed in preventing disease through moderation. The Chinese used acupuncture, herbs, massage, diet and gentle exercises to correct imbalances within the body.

The Indian medical system is known as Ayurveda, the"science of life". According to mythology, the science of Ayurveda came from the realm of the gods. Eventually, it was taught to a small group of human disciples. These physicians then taught the science of life to other human physicians. Eventually, it spread throughout India and much of the ancient world. Ayurveda was incorporated into most texts of the Vedas, the ancient scriptures which Hindu culture and religion is based. In the Rigveda, one of the ancient Hindu scriptures, over 1000 medicinal plants are listed, and a special group of sages who knew the secrets of plants is described. These ancient doctors are said to have made artificial limbs, cured wounds, used the soma plant (now thought to be a mushroom, Amanita muscaria) as an anesthetic, and more.

The Charaka Samhita, one of the most famous Indian medical texts dating back to preliterate times, was preserved for many generation by oral traditions before it was written down in the 1st century AD. Many references to Indian herbs and treatments are found in the famous herbal written by the Greek Dioscorides during the 1st century AD.

This herbal, which attests to the influence of Indian medicine on the West, is only one example of a continuos flow of medical information from India to the Mediterranean area from Roman times forward.

At roughly the same time the Chinese and Indians were developing their herb-based healing traditions, the Egyptians were doing the same. In ancient Egypt, medicine united magic, prayers, spells, and sacrifices with empirical treatments and some surgery. A host of medical documents recorded on papyrus have survived and have given modern scholars a fairly complete picture of Egyptian medical practices. While most of the papyruses have been dated between 2000 and 1000 BC, they refer to older traditions that had been transmitted orally.

GRECO-ARABIC MEDICINE

The history of herbs and medicine in these Dark Ages (from 641, the fall of Alexandria, to 1096, the First Crusade) was dominated in western and northern Europe by the monastery on the one hand and the herb lady on the other. The monasteries perpetuated the healing doctrines and herbal knowledge of Galen and Dioscorides, while the folk healers stirred a pot of ancient herbal lore, pragmatic healing know-how, and pagan sorcery. The latter are preserved in history as quacks or, worse, witches who brewed everything from harmless folk remedies to venomous abortifacients, from love potions to disgusting elixirs and outright poisons.

Of course, the church itself adopted versions of the ancient lore, such as tying bundles of herbs to doors to keep out the witches or wearing amulets to ward off disease. In the Mediterranean region at this time, the Arabs dominated. When they overran North Africa in the 7th century, the Arabs seized countless Greek and Roman medical texts, which were collected in Baghdad and closely studied by Arab physicians. Under the influence of this Greco-Roman medical trove, Arabic medical practice flourished, stirring changes and spurring advances.

Although the Arabs were initially quite empirical in their approach, drawing on Hippocratic principles, in the end, the Galenic concept of medicine, based on mechanical laws of anatomy, logic and physiology, prevailed. Galen believed doctors should be guided by theory rather than observation, and the Arabs, guided by the example and writings of Ibn-Sina, who was known in the west as Avicenna, accepted that concept.

A school of medicine established in the 8th century in Salerno, Italy, became the prime vehicle for the learnings of Arab physicians. The Arabian Islamics believed that Alla in his wisdom had provided medicines aplenty in nature (a belief that finds its counterpart in the Old Testament). Arab physicians enthusiastically researched plant medicines and developed a vast amount of information on healing plants from Europe, Persia, India, and the Far East. The Arab businessmen also took an active interest in herbs. They were the first occidental pharmacists and had opened their shops in Baghdad by the early 9th century.

After the Crusades, Arabian pharmaceutical expertise took root in Europe. Highly sweetened and exotically spiced preparations made with plants from faraway lands became popular healing agents. However, the study of native plants still found no favor. Herbalists who had inherited the common sense of the old folk medicine tradition were legally and socially separated from the so-called proper practice of medicine. Folk remedies and the old local traditions of herbal wisdom became more and more a threat to the medical academies.

The Crusades are generally credited with pulling western and northern Europe out of the Dark Ages. They certainly introduced the material goods of the Middle East and through it, the Orient, to Europeans. Paramount among these luxuries of the East were spices. These spices produced fortunes and helped to spur world exploration.

GRECO-ROMAN MEDICINE

Greek medicine was the root of Roman medicine, which in turn influenced most European medicine for 1000 years. To herbalists, the two great figures in Roman medicine were Galen (130-200 AD) and Dioscorides (first century AD), both Greeks. Galen, physician to Marcus Aurelius, wrote a "recipe" book of 130 antidotes and medicines.

Dioscorides, also a physician, traveled with the Roman legions. He wrote the first true herbal, an attempt to describe the medicinal plants of the Mediterranean area and their functions. His book, De Materia Medica, describes very sketchily about 500 plants. Because the descriptions are short and vague, it's quite a trick to match them to the appropriate Mediterranean plants. Galen's work is no more instructive. And these men, along with Theophrastus, were the final authorities on European herbalism.

Until well into the 16th century, when a new world of plants brought back by explorers forced a reevaluation of botany and medicine, Dioscorides was reverently cited by herbalists all over Europe.

HERBS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Between Dioscorides and Fuchs lay all the Middle Ages, the age of chivalry and monasticism and enclosed gardens of unicorn tapestries and ladies in their bowers with lutists softly playing in the flowers at their feet the age of plagues and lepers, famines and crusades. What was the fate of herbals and herb gardening in such romantic and brutal times?

Since universities were not yet in existence, the great repositories of learning in medieval Europe were the monasteries, where literacy was nurtured and manuscripts were dutifully copied. For the most part, herbal literature was on hold. Most monks contented themselves with copying Dioscorides (faithfully or otherwise), but a few were writing down their own thoughts on gardening.

One such was Walahfrid Strabo (c. 807-840 AD), a dirt gardener at the abbot of Reichenau in Switzerland. In his poem Hortulus (The Little Garden), he wrote a celebration of gardening that devoted enthusiastic sections to the cycle of work in the garden (On the Cultivation of Gardens, The Difficulty of the Undertaking, and The Gardener's Perseverance and the Fruits of his Labor).

Strabo also devoted sections to his favorite plants, which included sage, rue, melon, fennel, wormwood, lily, poppy and mint. He gave the growth habits and uses of his plants, and he, like the Romans, grew them in raised beds. Pleasure gardens were alive and well in the Middle Ages. Even Albertus Magnus, the great Dominican theologian, turned his attention to the requirements of a pleasure garden in On Vegetables and Plants (c. 1260). Albertus described the garden as centering on a lawn, around which were sweet-smelling herbs (he recommended rue, sage and basil). But this was only a floral "carpet". There were also fruit and shade trees and "furniture", such as a fountain and a bench of flowering turf.

The pleasure garden was almost invariably enclosed, and it was usually small--less than 1000 square feet. As in their Persian forerunners, water features heightened the enjoyment of the medieval gardens. And fresh fruit provided consolation when the great flush of spring bloom was over. Aromatic herbs such as rosemary and lavender remained popular. Occasionally, peacocks or other ornamental fowl were allowed free reign. And the turf seats -- built up against walls or under trees and sided with brick, boards and even wattle-and-daub -- seemed to be innovations.