Traditional Medicine

 

Classical history

 

In the written record, the study of herbs dates back 5,000 years to the ancient Sumerians, who described well-established medicinal uses for plants. Ancient Egyptian medicine of 1000 BC are known to have used various herbs for medicine. The Old Testament also mentions herb use and cultivation in regards to Kashrut.
Many herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda were described by ancient Indian herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta during the 1st millennium BC. The first Chinese herbal book was the Shennong Bencao Jing, compiled during the Han Dynasty but dating back to a much earlier date, which was later augmented as the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs) during the Tang Dynasty. Early recognised Greek compilers of existing and current herbal knowledge include Pythagoreanism, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Galen.
Roman writers included Pliny the Elder and Celsus. Pedanius Dioscorides included the writings of the herbalist Krateuas, physician to Mithridates VI King of Pontus from 120 to 63 BC in his De Materia Medica. De Materia Medica was translated into several languages, and Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew names were added to it over the centuries. Latin manuscripts of De Materia Medica were combined with a Latin herbal by Apuleius Platonicus (Herbarium Apuleii Platonici) and were incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon codex Cotton Vitellius C.III.
These early Greek and Roman compilations became the backbone of European medical theory and were translated by the Persian Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037), the Persian Rhazes (Rāzi, 865–925) and the Jewish Maimonides. Translations of Greek medical handbooks and manuscripts into Arabic took place in the eighth and ninth centuries 

Arabic indigenous medicine developed from the conflict between the magic-based medicine of the Bedouins and the Arabic translations of the Hellenic and Ayurvedic medical traditions. Spanish indigenous medicine was influenced by the Arabs from 711 to 1492. Islamic physicians and Muslim botanists such as al-Dinawari and Ibn al-Baitar significantly expanded on the earlier knowledge of materia medica. The most famous Arabic medical treatise was Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine, which was an early pharmacopoeia and introduced the method of clinical trials. The Canon was translated into Latin in the 12th century and remained a medical authority in Europe until the 17th century. The Unani system of traditional medicine is also based on the Canon.