Plant Guide

Already in the earliest stages of human development the plants were not only a source of nutrition, they help a person get rid of the disease. The oldest extant medical treatises - this tablet, it can be said, the first reference plant found during excavations of the Sumerian city (III millennium BC). In the 145 lines in Sumerian recipe given 15 prescriptions. They imply that the doctors of ancient Sumer was used mostly plants such as mustard, fir, pine, thyme, willow, plum fruit, pears, figs and others.
Literary sources indicate that the use of medicinal plants in Assyria, Egypt, India, China around 3000 BC. e., and at the beginning of n. e. - In Iran, Greece and Rome; in the Middle Ages - in the Arab countries, Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and European countries.
Culture and knowledge of the ancient Sumerians inherited the Babylonians, which was used for medicinal purposes licorice root, datura, henbane, linseed, etc. The Babylonians noticed that the sunlight adversely affects the healing properties of certain plants, so dried them in the shade, and some herbs even collected at night. It is widely used plants in China, India, Tibet. Even in 3216 BC. e. Chinese emperor Shennong wrote a work on medicine, "Peng-Cao" ( "Herbal"), the first full-fledged plant guide, much of which is devoted to the description of herbal remedies. Traditional Chinese medicine has used more than 1500 plants, most often it used astragalus, ginseng, ginger, dogwood, cinnamon, lemongrass Chinese, onion, mandarin peel, primrose, licorice, asparagus, garlic and skullcap.
Ayurveda outlined in "Ayurveda» (I in. BC. E.) Used about 800 plants, which are used in the present time. With the III. n. e. India began the cultivation of medicinal plants.
Tibetan medicine has arisen on the basis of the Indian, in his treatise on Tibetan medicine "Chzhud shi" has a large section on the use of medicinal plants. Tibetan medicine has long been surrounded by mysticism, but in 1898 a doctor Peter Badmayev translated "Chzhud shi" in the Russian language, created the office of Tibetan medicine in St. Petersburg and successfully treated the residents of St. Petersburg Oriental herbs, which he brought from Mongolia. In Tibetan medicine is used about 400 species of medicinal plants.