**1. Introduction**

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 constituents during prehistoric time would be problematic.

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 maintaining health is fully recognized.

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 constituents that helped humans remain healthy.

Throughout time, medical care has continually progressed, moving from illnesses to vaccinations and new medicines along with improved healthcare facilities that can more accurately diagnose and treat health problems. Advancements in modern medicine and medical care have enabled people to live longer and healthier lives. New medicines from plant materials and antibiotics from microflora have defeated most diseases. By using tissue and blood samples along with X-rays, and other materials, medical laboratories are able to diagnose the affliction, ensuring the physician can recommend the appropriate medicine in an appropriate amount.

Our prehistoric ancestors could only rely on their senses to test plants and plant constituents for taste and medicinal activity. From this beginning, however, medicinal and aromatic plants have brought many benefits, such as food flavoring, medicines, preservatives, decorations, beauty, and personal pleasure.

 Accumulated knowledge of medicinal and aromatic plants from ancient history until today has passed from generation to generation, improving health and life. While the importance of medicinal and aromatic plants is not recognized by everyone, loss of species due to climate changes, plant diseases, or other plant attacks could eliminate several plant species along with the benefits to which we are accustomed.

 Encouraging a lot of practices, the knowledge went down to later ages. On the other hand, various climates on earth have encouraged the selection of species, eventually many regional specific unique medicinal and aromatic plants exist in the whole world. Medicinal and aromatic plants and ethnobotany were used for an original medicine of each civilizations and cultures. The movement of human causes the spread of knowledge and distribution of materials.

 Dramatic events of history were the discoveries of special plants and the chemical health constituents within the plants. Due to the scarcity of the plant materials, people ventured throughout the world to seek new spice plants and the habitat in which these plants grew (**Figure 1**) [1]. By the eighteenth century, spices were recognized as medicine, a preservative, and food flavoring. By the eighteenth century, important substances were discovered and invented important substances for human health (**Table 1**) [2]. Many synthesized medicines were patterned after plant extracts that provide outlines for new modern medicines.

**Figure 1.**  *Mail routes of the silk road [1].* 

*Role of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants: Past, Present, and Future DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82497* 


**Table 1.** 

*The person who built organic chemistry [2].* 

Currently, a focus on integrated medicine provides plenty of plants and plant constituent choices for treatment of sickness. Not only in modern medicine, but also the use of plants, aromatherapy, crude drugs, and several other therapies have been adopted in the home and the hospital. Those natural drug and therapy are useful for preventive medicine too. Medicinal and aromatic plants are a good resource to develop new medicine and treat body and mind. The possibility of medicinal and aromatic plants is a hope continually for human live.

#### **2. Past**

#### **2.1 Start of uses**

Since the primitive ages, our ancestor ate plants and likely found medicines accidentally, and used for the treatments. The history related human and medicine is long, the oldest record was 5000–3000 BC in Alps from Ötzi, the Iceman used plant medicines [3]. Since then, for many centuries, human repeated trial and error and accumulate knowledge. At the same time, human likely thought to preserve the plants for a sudden health problem, such as dried plants, and started cultivations too. For example, Cannabis was cultivated in ancient Egypt [4], and opium poppy was cultivated in lower Mesopotamia and used in 3400 BC [5]. After human started to use language, they started recording medical information of plants and the records went down in later ages.

#### **2.2 Brief history of traditional medicines**

Before century, ancient civilizations were occurred around the four biggest rivers, the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow, which had own characteristic medicine. In China, 2800 BC to 1700 BC, Pen Ts'ao Shen Nung investigated about medicine and drug and established a foundation for traditional Chinese medicine. Later, Tao Hongjing (452–536) categorized medicinal plants to three phases: the first, second, and third. The first phase is harmlessness for long-term use, the second phase is mixed toxic and nontoxic one and as tonic, the third phase includes many toxic plants for curing disease and should not take for long term.

 In Mesopotamia, the oldest medical text of around 2600 BC was found. The time, cypress oil, licorice, and opium were used frequently. A medicine of Egypt was started from 2900 BC, the knowledge of drugs were recorded on papyrus, especially Ebers' Papyrus which was written around 1500 BC showed 810 prescriptions, such as a collutorium, an inhalant, a suppository, a poultice, and a lotion. Greek Roma medicine was influenced of Egyptian medicine; Hippocrates (460–377 BC) used about 60 kinds of medicinal plants for medical treatments. De Materia Medica written by Dioscorides (40–90) was used as the world bible of medicine until sixteenth century. Galenus (130–201), called the greatest doctor in Roman era, developed many pharmaceutical preparations called galenical preparations now, the preparations are used even in present. The oldest pharmacy came into being at Baghdad in Islamic culture. The pharmacy carried Arabic spices, medicines of Persia, India, and China, camphor, clove, and musk. Avicenna (980–1037), called Galenus of Arab, had written Book of Healing and Canon of Medicine and invented steam distillation of essential oil extraction. Currently, an estimated 70,000 plant species are used in traditional medicine [6].
