The World of Medicinal Herbs

In our little sphere of modernity, the use of medicinal herbs may seem edgy and new, but the truth is that human beings have turned to the world of green for health and nurture from the beginning. The oldest known treatments for the ailments that still plague us today—from headaches to sore feet, from muscle cramps to melancholy—come from the world of plants. In becoming more knowledgeable about medicinal herbs, their powers, and their limitations, we join people who have harvested plant parts and prepared them according to their cultural traditions throughout history. Our advantage, in these days of modern medical science, is that in many cases we have the ability to learn how and why these plants can do what they do for our minds and bodies. That is the purpose of this book: to draw together the ancient and the modern, to recognize the remarkable healing properties of plants both familiar and rare, and to bring modern science to bear on understanding how the plant world interacts with the human.