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These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, [1] [2] and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food ...
In ancient Egypt, herbs were mentioned in Egyptian medical papyri, depicted in tomb illustrations, or on rare occasions found in medical jars containing trace amounts of herbs. [8] In ancient Egypt, the Ebers papyrus dates from about 1550 BCE, and covers more than 700 compounds, mainly of plant origin. [9]
The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opium are listed on clay tablets, c. 3000 BC. The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt, c. 1550 BC, describes over 850 plant medicines.
The use of plants for medicinal purposes, and their descriptions, dates back two to three thousand years. [10] [11] The word herbal is derived from the mediaeval Latin liber herbalis ("book of herbs"): [2] it is sometimes used in contrast to the word florilegium, which is a treatise on flowers [12] with emphasis on their beauty and enjoyment rather than the herbal emphasis on their utility. [13]
Herbs generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant (either fresh or dried), while spices are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits. Herbs have a variety of uses including culinary, medicinal, aromatic and in some cases, spiritual.
Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum (Ancient Greek: Περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορία, Peri phyton historia) was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance.
The history of spices reach back thousands of years, dating back to the 8th century B.C. Spices are widely known to be developed and discovered in Asian civilizations. Spices have been used in a variety of antique developments for their unique qualities. There were a variety of spices that were used for common purposes across the ancient world.
Botany (Greek Βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; [2] Medieval Latin botanicus – herb, plant) [3] and zoology are, historically, the core disciplines of biology whose history is closely associated with the natural sciences chemistry, physics and geology. A distinction can be made between botanical science ...