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Facilitator : Lady NightShade Date : 13 August 1995 |
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Facilitator : Lady NightShade Date : 13 August 1995 |
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The Chinese, probably on account of its scarcity, have a very extraordinary opinion of the virtues of this root, so that it sells for many times its weight in silver. Americans, on the contrary, disregard it because it is found plentifully in their woods.
(Robert Thornton, British doctor, 1814)
It has been asked why the Chinese do not grow their own Ginseng....Ginseng requires practically a virgin soil, and as China proper has been the home of teeming millions for thousands of years, one readily sees that necessary conditions for the plant hardly exist in that old and crowded country.
(A.R. Harding, Ginseng and Other Medicinal Plants', 1908)
I never found it worth a damn for anything but to get money out of.
(Jake Plott, Georgia ginseng trader, year unknown)
The first major Chinese medical work to be translated into Western languages was the Materia Medica of Li-Shih-Chen'. It was first published in 1596.
A compendium of remedies, it lists 12,000 prescriptions and formulas, and analyzes 1074 plant substances, 443 animal substances, and 354 mineral substances. The book is still studied by traditional Chinese physicians.
A trove of ancient herbal information was discovered in a remarkable Egyptian medical document dated to 1550 BC.
This comprehensive roll, discovered by the German Egyptologist George Ebers in 1874, is about 65 feet long and contains extensive information about surgery and internal medicine. More important to the herb historian are listings of some 800 medicinal drugs, including anise, caraway, cassia, coriander, fennel, cardamom, onions, garlic, thyme, mustard, sesame, fenugreek, saffron, and poppy seed.
The Egyptians used these aromatic plant materials in medicine, cosmetic ointments, perfumes, aromatic oils, cooking, fumigation, and, notably, in embalming.
The Hanging Gardens, in what is now Iraq, have been called one of the seven wonders of the world. Legend has it that the gardens were built by King Nebuchadnezzar II for his favorite wife, who was homesick for trees and mountains on the featureless Mesopotamian plains. Legend lies, however, in calling the gardens "hanging" -- unless, of course, the occasional trailing vine constitutes hanging.
The Hanging Gardens were really terraced roof gardens, built over a massive, arching stone foundation and huge storage rooms. The roofs were waterproofed with layers of bitumen, reeds, bricks, and lead, and soil was then added to a depth suitable for trees. Deep wells supplied water to the gardens by means of a hydraulic machine.
Did Nebuchadnezzar grow herbs on his roof gardens? Babylonian records show that the citizens of the day had thyme, coriander, saffron, anise, poppy, mandrake, rosemary, and hemp, as well as ornamentals such as roses, lupines, and anemones. Surviving accounts describe the effect -- the manufactured mountain towering above the Babylonian plain -rather than the plants, but surely any pleasure garden would have had at least a few of the aromatics.
The Arab lands lay between the spice-producing Eastern countries and the spice-consuming Western countries. In the millennia before Christ, the Arabs took full advantage of their proximity and established a virtual monopoly on trade between East and West. All of the overland routes passed through their turf. Sea voyages were dangerous and time-consuming.
In about 40 AD, the secret of the wind systems over the Indian Ocean was unlocked by a Greek merchant named Hippalus. He observed that twice a year the prevailing winds --called monsoons-- changed direction. From April through October, the prevailing southwesterly favored the trip from Egypt to India. Then from October through April, the northeast monsoon was favorable for a return trip.
Hippalus showed that by taking advantage of these winds, a round trip between Egypt and the pepper- producing Malabar Coast of India could be completed in less than a year. Until Hippalus' discovery, such a voyage was taking at least two years.
The discovery of the monsoons allowed the Romans to sail directly from a land they controlled, Egypt, to the source of spices and other goods they wanted. It sharply reduced the importance of the overland spice routes.
Some of the most effective herbal medicines, called simples, feature but a single herb. The concept of the simple seems wonderful, but the application of simpling turns out to be tough for people to embrace warmly.
Throughout history, physicians (and pharmacists) have favored the complex, potent, make-'em-well-right now bolt of medicine. A cup of herb tea, efficacious as it may be, is not usually the drug of choice. And patients *themselves* favor what the doctor touts. The simple is usually the choice of those who-- through economic hardship or isolation--have no other choice.
The all-time bolt of medicine had to be Galen's Theriac, truly a 'witches' brew. Beyond its opium base, it contained more than 70 ingredients, including dozens of herbs, minerals, chunks of animal flesh, honey, and wine. The pharmacists was required to compound subrecipes first, then mix them together. At a minimum, the melange was expected to mature for 40 days...longer was better.
The earliest surviving copy of De Materia Medica is a Byzantine manuscript prepared in about 512 AD. Called the Codex Vindobonensis, it features nearly 400 full-page, strikingly natural paintings of plants.
The art of the Codex is so realistic, especially compared to the crude and stylized pictures in the herbals of the next 1000 years, that it has been attributed to the greatest botanical illustrator of ancient times, Krateuas, the legendary physician to the tyrant king and poisoner par excellence, Mithridates VI Eupator.
The Codex formed the high point of herbal illustration until the appearance in 1542 of Leonhard Fuch's De Historia Stirpium, with its exquisite and readily recognizable woodcuts.
The plan of St. Gall, drawn in 820 AD, is the idealized layout of a Benedictine Monastery. There are four gardens: the cloister garth, where the monks walked and meditated; the cemetery/orchard where they were buried; the medicinal herb garden; and the vegetable garden.
The medicinal garden was walled and adjoined the infirmary/physician's house. Less than 1000 square feet altogether, it was a tidy garden of raised beds. Each bed was devoted to a single plant: lily, rose, climbing bean, savory, costmary, fenugreek, rosemary, mint, sage, rue, iris, pennyroyal, watercress, cumin, lovage, and fennel.
Herbs had the featured role in the kitchen garden as well. The plan shows it as a walled, rectangular plot adjoining the gardener's house. Plainer than the infirmary garden, it had raised beds with plank sides and paths between. Herbs reserved for culinary use were coriander, dill, two kinds of poppy, parsley, chervil, and savory. Again, each plant had its own bed.
The plan may seem to have leaned heavily on herbs, but herbs were a medieval staple. For dyeing clothes and illuminating manuscripts; for chasing moths from cloth and fleas and lice from people; for preventing and curing disease; for adorning a church; or for disguising spoiled food....everyone used herbs and grew them.
St. Anthony is the saint who protects against fire, epilepsy, and infection. A religious hermit, he lived in Egypt, where he died in 356 AD. During the Crusades, his remains were moved from Egypt to Dauphin, France, the site of the first recognized epidemic, in 1039, of what was to become known as St. Anthony's Fire.
In the most common form of the "fire", the victim suffered intense, firelike pain in the limbs, which eventually would turn gangrenous. Delirium and hallucinations were common. So was death. St. Anthony was saddled with the fire when the Order of St. Anthony's was established in Dauphin, along with a hospital to care for Fire victims.
It wasn't until 1676 that the cause of St. Anthony's Fire-- a fungus that infects certain cereal grains, principally rye,--was isolated. The fungus, Claviceps purpurea, or ergot, had been recognized as a poison as far back as 600 BC, but it wasn't until the millers conscientiously monitored the grains they ground for ergot that the Fire was brought under control (although occasional outbreaks have occurred, even into the 20th century).
Ergot today is the source of important drugs used in obstetrics, internal medicine, and psychiatry. The nature of the hallucinations victims of St. Anthony's Fire experienced can be imagined; lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a synthetic derivative of ergot.
Food was neither wholesome nor palatable. Cattle, slaughtered in October, were salted and kept until the following spring. Spices were believed to have a beneficial preservative action in meat. Potatoes were unknown and very few other vegetables could be obtained, either in or out of season. There were few lemons to flavor beverages, no sugar to sweeten them. Neither tea nor coffee nor chocolate was available. Spices, however, such as pepper, cinnamon, ginger and cardamom, when mixed with the coarsest, dullest, even the most repulsive fare, could make it more palatable. Spices were used to camouflage bad flavors and odors, and it was also believed that their consumption would prevent illness. Spiced wines were popular; in fact, the more spices in the wine, the more delectable it was thought to be.
From "The Book of Spices" by Frederick Rosengarten, Jr.
Posting Date: 07 September 1995
©1995 Red
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