Section 2 Medicinal Plants

**13**

**Chapter 2**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

ing health is fully recognized.

ents that helped humans remain healthy.

Role of Medicinal and Aromatic

Plants: Past, Present, and Future

Before the concept of history began, humans undoubtedly acquired life benefits by discovering medicinal and aromatic plants that were food and medicine. As our early ancestors learned to recognize and consume selected plants, civilization and personal and group health could advance. Traditional medicine would become part of every civilization with medicinal and aromatic plants widely used and applied to maintain life. Undoubtedly, the variety of available plant materials would be tasted and tested to determine whether a plant was valuable as a food or medicine. Today, a variety of available herbs and spices are used and enjoyed throughout the world and continue to promote good health. As the benefits from medicinal and aromatic plants are recognized, these plants will have a special role for humans in the future.

**Keywords:** healing, pharmaceuticals, herbs, spices, remarkable constituents

ents during prehistoric time would be problematic.

From the beginning, human life in prehistoric time was undoubtedly difficult. To survive, our ancestors needed food for energy and medicine to maintain health. While a high-energy food, such as meat, would be available by hunting animals, medicines to treat afflictions were undoubtedly more difficult to find. Although modern science has discovered plants and plant extracts that can treat and cure diseases, locating and identifying plants that contained health-promoting constitu-

The oldest available medicinal records, written in 5000–3000 BCE by Sumerians on clay tablets, demonstrate that humans understood diseases and that the use of medicine-containing plants could help maintain and restore good health. Medicinal plants discovered on the preserved body known as Ötzi, the Iceman that was accidently killed between 3400 and 3100 BCE in the cold, mountainous Alps, suggests that others were aware of medicinal plants. While the history of our early ancestors and medicines is incomplete, the value of medicinal plants in curing and maintain-

Plants, which are subject to destruction by foraging animals and insects, undoubtedly survived by producing repulsive, distasteful chemical constituents that repelled foraging animals. Humans could be selective in the parts of a plant they would eat, observing that consuming some plant tissues, such as fruit, leaves, or roots of some species, made people feel better. From these initial beginnings, gardens of desirable plants would be established for the food and the plant constitu-

*Maiko Inoue, Shinichiro Hayashi and Lyle E. Craker*
