Many nutrients can be found in the herbs and weeds that grow around us. Herbalism or Herbal medicine is the practice of using these plants to heal the body.Since the dawn of recorded history, plants have been the primary source of medicine for people throughout the world. In fact, many cultures still use plants as a major source of medicine today. Plants which are used as medicines have been referred to as herbs for over 4,000 years. The word “herb” is used to refer to any part of any plant used for flavoring or medicine. Thus an herb may be a bark, a flower, a fruit, a leaf or a root, as well as a non-woody plant.

The knowledge and use of herbs was commonplace in pre-industrial times. However, with industrialization and the movement of people from the countryside to cities, knowledge of herbs faded. This knowledge has been accumulating for centuries. The earliest records of the use of beneficial plants are nearly 5,000 years old, in a Chinese Pharmacopoeia. At the turn of the century, doctors were still semi-herbalists, employing a large variety of plants and often making their own preparations. It was not until the middle of the 19th century that herbalism came under scrutiny of modern science. Active constituents were isolated from herbs and their structure was duplicated synthetically; giving us our modern day “medicine”.

Interest in herbs as medicine and food is currently reviving as people everywhere begin to develop an awareness of the natural world around them, paired with the painful truth of the mis-represented synthetic medicines, which often cause harmful side-effects and suppress symptoms, rather than heal the source of the problem. There is also the issue of rising health care costs for these medicines, when you have the ability to heal yourself for free just by walking out your back door. Health is a slow cumulative process built up each day from our daily habits. Rather than being just “the absence of illness and injury”, it is the condition of physical, spiritual, and social well being. Herbs can help us attain this goal of well being.

About the Author of this article, Jessica Snow.