The history of medicine and pharmacopoeia starts with the narration of how practices and substances that were more on the side of superstition or magic than of efficacy or true healing results have been discarded, but it also consists largely of in the recovery of ancestral medical knowledge, annulled or forgotten sometimes for centuries, and that current disciplines such as ethnomedicine or ethnopharmacology are recovering and returning to the treatment of old and new diseases.
Here are five old remedies that continue to heal and give talk.
The two artemises
1.The St.John's wort ( Artemisia vulgaris ) is a herbaceous plant that can reach two meters high and is believed to have been among the first plants used as medicine by being human.
It is native to Europe and Asia and there are historical records of its use by the Chinese and different European peoples.It is used as an analgesic , dewormer, anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antibacterial, to regulate and attenuate the effects of menstruation, and a long etc.However, its use in pregnant or breastfeeding women is not recommended, nor its use without the help of a Knowingly, it also has toxins.
2.The sweet artemisa ( Artemisia annua ) belongs to the same genus as St.John's wort, but it grows in Asia, where its medicinal properties were discovered and used by the Chinese more than 2,000 years ago.As its cousin, sweet sagebrush is used for dysfunctions as varied as jaundice and hemorrhoids, but where it has really stood out is in the treatment of malaria or malaria.
Chinese scientists isolated one of its components, the artemisinin , and showed that it was going backwards the disease and also had none of the counterproductive effects of other treatments against malaria.
Animal remedies
3.Not all medicines are of plant origin; there is one that was used until the end of the 19th century and used to be an example of erroneous medicine, which one hundred years later is being claimed.We refer to the use of leeches .
For a long time it was believed that excess blood caused disease and that it was necessary to extract it to cure the patient, and in that sense the leeches were one of the most civilized modes of extraction.
Currently some European hospitals these animals are used in postoperative care, when fingers or ears have been violently separated from their owners, or in skin transplants.The leeches drain excess blood and produce a protein that prevents clotting.
4 A medieval recipe with cow bile as the main ingredient (the others are not as exotic: wine, onion and garlic), has proven to be an effective remedy to destroy super bacteria such as the staphylococcus aureus , resistant to many modern antibiotics.
The recipe was called "eye ointment" and was translated from an Anglo-Saxon medical book from 1,000 years ago.
Bells for Alzheimer's
5.The ancient Bulgarians used the flowers of the winter bell ( Galanthus nivalis) to rub it on the forehead and thus remove the headache.Of this plant the Russians extracted a component, the galantamine , which is used in Alzheimer's treatments.In Eastern Europe the Plant has been used for centuries for polio and for its emetic properties.
Certainly the ancient popular wisdom and the different elements of nature will continue to provide us with surprises and cures , if we pay due attention and leave our prejudices aside.
And if you are interested in this subject, then you should like the curious use of analgesics in the past.
Images: Boston Public Library , Sallie , Lloyd Crothers , Frank Vassen , BiteYourBum.Com Photography
Comments
Post a Comment