In ancient civilizations, medicine was inextricably bound up with religion. All the earliest physicians practised autosuggestion, hypnotism and psychotherapy, though certainly in somewhat different form and under different names. Natural remedies were prescribed for natural diseases, and “magic” remedies for what we now would call psychosomatic diseases and many forms of mental illness. The skills of genuine healers were sometimes assumed by charlatans and tricksters who had no training and no knowledge, but merely a convincing manner and an outstretched palm. Any fool could chant an unintelligible rhyme or sell a so-called “remedy” or “elixir”, and gullible people would buy. The disrepute thus brought to natural medicines and herbs still dogs herb users today. A friend of mine who has suffered chronic illness for many years steadfastly refuses to try any simple herbal preparations on the grounds that she will not poison herself with herbs and “all that mumbo-jumbo”. (I have been “poisoning” myself and my family with herbs a long time now, and our health and resistance to disease is proof enough for me that Nature knows best.) Prevention, everyone tells us, is better (and easier) than cure. The beauty of using herbs daily in many different ways is that so many of them have value in building up resistance to disease; and if a disease does strike, herbal preparations will usually do good without having the side-effects of so many artificially created drugs. But enough of my pet hobby-horse and back to our history.
As the legions of Rome spread out over their conquered territories, Roman customs and way of life changed the ways of the indigenous peoples. After the soldiers came the governors and administrators, and with them the monks, who brought not only their own religious beliefs, but practical knowledge in the fields of agriculture, health and nutrition. Many herbs were carried as gifts from one monastery to another by travelling monks, and from the monasteries the people gradually gained knowledge of the many uses to which they could be put. One of the earliest forms of taking herbs in the diet was in cordials, or an infusion of the herb in wine. From these “cordials”, evolved over the centuries, came the recipes for many of our present-day liqueurs. When you next drink Chartreuse or Kummel or Anisette, give a thought to those peregrinating monks, who used their knowledge and skill in blending herbs and spices (Chartreuse contains some forty-six ingredients) into recipes still unchanged today. These cordials were drunk usually as an aid to digestion at the end of a large meal, for the eating habits of the day were such that the food was often highly unpalatable, owing to deterioration, or indigestible. It is easy to understand the preoccupation with flatulence and stomach troubles in early herbal writings of this period.
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