Scientists Who Pioneered Herbal Medicine

In a book entitled Plant Drugs that Changed the World, Taylor (1965) described the discovery and use of  

Such messages of hope have come from nearly every country. The secrets of Nature s bounty were often unlocked by people so simple that they never guessed their discoveries would someday reach the floor of the stock exchange. Centuries ago, for who knows how long, there must have been patient, watchful testing of hundreds of plants. How else to explain the final triumph  

Among these unsuspecting benefactors of mankind have been Indians from Amazonian rain forests arrow poisoners from Africa and their cousins, the ordeal poisoners Indians from the Andes Greek peasants the Jesuits of Lima a Chinese emperor hundreds of years before the birth of Christ a Shropshire farm woman, and scores of others. 

The story of specifics and other remedies derived from plants is thus the record of centuries of trial and error. It deals with whispers from the earth that are now available in every drugstore. 

But beyond such daunting complexities lies the history of our ultimate conquest of many diseases. Where these plants were found, who first used them, and how they reached us constitute the story of our emergence from what one pharmacologist called the frailties of our existence (Taylor, 1965). Furthermore, it is impossible to identify an individual culture throughout the world that first used herbal plants to treat specific diseases. In a book entitled The Cherokee Herbal, Indians are cited as using the following herbal plants to treat common maladies  

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