Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals.
The bark of willow trees contains salicylic acid, the active metabolite of aspirin, and has been used for millennia to relieve pain and reduce fever.
Dioscorides's 1st century De materia medica, seen here in a c. 1334 copy in Arabic, describes some 1000 drug recipes based on over 600 plants.
The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BC) from Ancient Egypt describes the use of hundreds of plant medicines.
Illustration of a 1632 copy of Avicenna's 1025 The Canon of Medicine, showing a physician talking to a female patient in a garden, while servants prepare medicines.
Traditional medicine comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the era of modern medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as "the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement and treatment of physical and mental illness". Traditional medicine is often contrasted with scientific medicine.
Traditional medicine in a market in Antananarivo, Madagascar
Botánicas such as this one in Jamaica Plain, Boston, cater to the Latino community and sell folk medicine alongside statues of saints, candles decorated with prayers, lucky bamboo, and other items.
Curandera performing a limpieza in Cuenca, Ecuador
Sometimes traditional medicines include parts of endangered species, such as the slow loris in Southeast Asia.
