Herbs Early Man found that using the rather risky process of trial and error he could expand the range of plants that he could utilise for culinary, medicinal and preservative purposes. The oldest recorded use for plants is medicinal and references to formal medical practice have been found dating back to 10,000BC. Ancient Sumerian and Egyptian records, dating from before 2,500BC, indicate a sophisticated and highly skilled knowledge of herbal medicine. The Ebers Papyrus c.(1,800BC) , discovered in 1874 by Georg Montz Ebers, details over 800 plants which were commonly prescribed for medicine, ritual and used in the embalming processes. The Babylonians left records showing that they grew bay, thyme and coriander and regularly traded in herbs, spices and aromatic oils with the Egyptians. Parallel development seemed to occur in China and India. The pharmacopeia compiled on the orders of Emperor Shen Nung, dated at around 2,700BC shows a deep knowledge of medicinal herbalism and the Rig Veda, one of the ancient Hindu scriptures, lists more than a thousand healing plants. Knowledge spread from Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece, from where it was gradually absorbed into Roman culture, taken by flow of Greek physicians who travelled through the classical world. Perhaps the most famous of these early herbalists is Egyptian-born Asclepius who practised in around 1,250BC. The names of his daughters, Panacea and Hygeia, who helped him, are certainly bound to be familiar, having entered modern medical terminology for a universal remedy and sanitary science respectively. The growth of herbalism, however, was largely dependant upon illiterate itinerant gather/practitioners to source, evaluate and gather the plants. There was, of course, a good deal of danger attached to this occupation, so it became the practice to use special mystical incantations and rituals to protect themselves against any evil which might befall them, building up a strong framework of ‘magic’ and belief in the occult. A more scientific approach, based on diagnosis and treatment, was introduced by Hippocrates (460-377BC). His work was augmented by a Greek army doctor, Dioscorides, who published his work De Materia Medica, in the 1st century, in which he describes and lists more than 500 plants. Around the same time, Pliny the Elder (23?-79) produced his Historia Naturalis, the only one of the 37 books which comprised his encyclopaedia of the arts and sciences to have been preserved, describing plants and their uses. The Dark Ages brought very little progress and it was not until the 8th century, when Arab physicians started translating early texts, adding their own observances. The most famous of these, the Moslem healer, Hakim Abu Ali al-Husayn Abd Allah Ibn Sina (born AD980), whose name was, not surprisingly, shortened and changed by westerners to Avicenna, contributed his huge work, al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine). Consisting of five volumes, totalling 1,000,000 words, he drew together all the medical knowledge of the period in the work, refining it into a science, and providing the basis for the Unani Tibb school of medicine which is still being practised over 1,000 years later. The 10th century also saw the first Anglo-Saxon herbal. Written in the common tongue, The Leech Book of Bald, placed its emphasis very firmly on magic and ritual. When the printing press was invented in the 15th century, some of the first and most influential volumes were herbals and the Elizabethan age saw a rash of texts appearing all over Europe: Herbarium viva eicones (1530), Otto von Brunfels; Newe Herball (1551), William Turner; Historie of Plantes (including New World plants such as the potato and tomato, 1597), John Gerard. In 1652, during the Commonwealth period in England, Nicholas Culpeper produced his volume, The English Physition, in which he combined both herbal observations and uses with their astrological natures. In 1664 The Kräuter Buch (The Plant Book), was published in Basel, by Dr Jakob Theodor Taberaemontanus. Three volumes, providing information on all the possible uses of over 3,000 European plants, both wild and cultivated. Herbalism still has a strong following today, but practitioners emphasise the importance of using the whole herb, not just the extract, arguing that Nature has provided internal foils for the active principles of the plant which ensure a safe and proper balance in its effects on the human body. For example, ephedrine, an alkaloid found in the Chinese herb, Ma Huang, when extracted and used as a drug for the treatment of asthma, was found to produce a dangerous rise in blood pressure levels. However, the whole plant contains another active ingredient which balances this effect by slowing down the heart rate and blood pressure. Modern herbals often distinguish between culinary and medicinal herbs, but in earlier time, there was no such distinction, as all foods were seen to have an effect, good or bad, upon one’s state of health. Most of the common vegetables of today were used in healing potions or poultices at one time or another and, like the Eastern doctrines of Ayurveda and Unani Tibb, the use of herbs and vegetables were largely interchangeable.